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AN UNCENSORED DIARY 



AN 
UNCENSORED DIARY 

FROM THE 
CENTRAL EMPIRES 



BY 
ERNESTA DRINKER BULLITT 




Gakden Citt New York 

DOUBLED AY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1917 



J}Sl5 

31 



Copyright, 1917, by 

DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



f 



m -4 1917 

©CLA457813 






FOREWORD 

The portion of my diary, which is published in 
this book, was written without thought of pubhca- 
tion. Remembering how greatly the diary, which 
my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Drinker kept 
during the Revolution, had interested her descend- 
ants, I recorded for my great-grandchildren my ex- 
periences last summer in Germany, Austria, Hungary, 
and Belgium. 

When publishers asked for the diary a century be- 
fore I had expected, I did not attempt to polish 
loose-jointed English or to suppress any but personal 
incidents. The pages of the book stand as written 
within the lines of the Central Powers. 

The character referred to as "Billy," throughout 
the diary, is my husband, William C. Bullitt. 

Ernesta Drinker Bullitt. 

Philadelphia, January 17, 1917. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword v 

CHAPTER 

I. Germany . 3 

II, Belgium 117 

III, Austria and Hungary 167 



CHAPTER I 
GERMANY 



I 

GERMANY 

Copenhageny May IJ^, 1916. 

Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, before 
the war, one went abroad with no more preparation 
than a steamer ticket and an American Express 
check or two. Two days ago, we undertook to go 
from Holland to Denmark, via Germany. Before 
daring to approach Bentheim, the German frontier, 
we were equipped with passports, thrice vised; a 
special letter of identification from the Department 
of State, birth certificates, letters to the frontier 
authorities from Count Bernstorff and the German 
Minister at The Hague, eighty-seven other letters of 
introduction, two letters of credit, and a Philadelphia 
police card. 

We entered Germany at six in the afternoon laden 
with the milk of human kindness. We were broad- 
minded before we touched Germany. We — ^particu- 
larly Billy — were ready to understand Germany. 
Billy said he could see their point of view perfectly. 



4 An Uncensored Diary 

A young man got into the compartment. When 
we passed the first German mile-post, the young 
man opened conversation by explaining how much 
he hated America, b«!ause she was selling muni- 
tions to the Allies. He never smiled. Neither did 
any one else on the train. Nor did any one in the 
deserted Hamburg station; nor any one in the empty 
Atlantic Hotel. Billy, being of a chameleon-like 
nature, had become solemn. He did little things as 
if they were important, and he began to order me 
around and look as if he expected me to carry my 
own suit-case. 

In the Atlantic Hotel we asked to have supper 
served in our room, and were told no food could be 
had. True, it was midnight, but this was Ham- 
burg's greatest hotel. Once upon a time that was 
the hour for light and gaiety. I tried to look 
pathetic and rich. The waiter "fell," and brought 
us two blood oranges. We feared to go to sleep 
lest we talk indiscreetly. That a dictograph was 
hidden in the heater was a certainty, in Billy's 
mind. 

Early the next morning we were awakened and de- 
scended to an empty breakfast room. A blond and 
brainless waiter, aged seventeen, asked for our order. 



An Uncensored Diary 5 

"Coffee, milk, oranges, bacon and scrambled eggs, 
chocolate, rolls, and butter," said Billy, confidently 
and glibly. The blond one retired to take coimsel 
with a plainclothes man in a derby hat. Returning 
to us, he said: 

" There are no more oranges, there is no milk, nor 
is there bacon; the chocolate is made with water and 
we do not have rolls. You can have eggs, but you 
cannot have them scrambled — to-day is the day when 
we boil eggs. Will you have four or six, sir?" 

"Four," said Billy, humbly. 

The youth darted away to have the order counter- 
signed by the man in the derby hat, and witnessed by 
two under-secret aries. We waited. I looked out of 
the window into the courtyard. There were no 
plants in it, the flower beds were empty, and the 
fountains were dry. The rain knocked faintly on the 
window pane. 

Our depleted order came, but without sugar for the 
coffee. The waiter looked distracted when we asked 
for it and managed, after ten minutes' parley with his 
superior officers, to get two lumps. 

The taxi which took us to the station was another 
memento mori. It had evidently been rejected for 
military service because of lung trouble. As we 



6 An Uncensored Diary 

crept through the door of the station, we met two 
girls who were smiling — smiling! On the train we 
met only solemnity, and the whispered comment, 
"Americans." Billy was losing some of his broad- 
mindedness. 

At Warnemiinde we became "Number 36." At 
the upper end of a board shed we were left to shiver 
while the other passengers on the train, beginning 
with Number 1, disappeared through a sliding door. 
There were guards all about to keep one from walking 
anywhere one looked as if one wanted to go. Each 
time the door slid back we saw trunks, boxes, and 
passengers in various stages of disruption. 

"Thirty-six," called the Sergeant at the door. We 
entered without fear, for our baggage was innocent as 
a nun, and the seals of the other frontier were un- 
broken upon its hinges. 

A young man in field gray began the examination. 
He had been, before the war, a goatherd, I believe, or 
maybe a chimney sweep; but he had the mark of 
thoroughness upon him. I should like to make a law 
that no American customs' inspector be allowed to go 
to Germany in war time. It would teach him things 
about examining luggage he never ought to know. 
This soldier fell upon our trunks — ^he made no dis- 



An Uncensored Diary 7 

tinction between the soiled clothes bag and my white 
satin dress. As he went, he gathered speed. He 
whipped my blouses inside out, explored the feet of 
stockings, captured a piece of soap, delved between 
the bristles of a toothbrush, thumped the sides of my 
trunk, bent up my shoes and threw them upon my 
evening dresses, then fetched up on my underclothes. 
A pink silk garment was held up and shaken. The 
oflScer in charge cried out "combination," smiled 
affectionately at me, and came to superintend our un- 
packing. Billy presented our letters to the civil and 
military authorities from the German Ambassador and 
the Minister in Holland. The officer pocketed them. 

"These are to the civil and military authorities. I 
am a military authority, therefore I shall keep the 
letters — they are to me," said he. 

"Don't you think that is a trifle idiotic?" asked 
Billy. 

Visions of a firing-squad floated across the bare 
wall. But the officer merely turned upon his heel, 
while Billy remarked to me that junkers always 
thumbed their noses at reason. 

Then began a period of confiscation. Books, 
writing paper, visiting cards, pencils fell under the 
embargo. Billy bore these losses with fortitude, but 



8 An Uncensored Diary 

when his eleven tubes of hair tonic were placed among 
the other things, his manhood was undone, and they 
led him away bleating helplessly to be stripped. I 
was put in the charge of a female in a red flannel 
blouse, who looked at the soles of my feet, felt in my 
hair, pried open the back of my watch, evacuated the 
inside of my hat, plumbed the depths of my fountain 
pen, examined my clothes, and then succumbed to the 
mysteries of my letter of credit. 

I reached the outside world first. Billy was still in 
the hands of his explorer. I wondered if they were 
washing his back with acid for traces of secret writing. 
The boat whistle blew and still Billy did not come. 
Every one was on board when he came running down 
the wharf, his necktie flying, his shoe-laces undone. 

An aged ticket-taker stood on the ferry-boat at the 
end of the gang-plank. 

"Are you a German or a Dane?" I demanded. 

"A Dane," replied the aged man. 

"Thank God!" cried I. 

May 23d. 
Denmark is hospitable, inexpensive, and friendly. 
We have seen the Egans frequently. They have been 
more than kind. Mr. Egan has been in Denmark 



An Uncensored Diary 9 

eleven years — a longer period than any other diplo- 
mat in our service to-day has held a post. By com- 
mon consent, he is the most popular diplomat in Den- 
mark. The other Ministers keep dashing in and out, 
getting advice from Mr. Egan. He is one of the few 
diplomats we have who really fits his post. 

We have gathered, in the course of many conversa- 
tions here, some interesting facts, one really import- 
ant one: the proposed purchase of the Danish West 
Indies by the United States, which may go through in 
a short while now. Denmark is called "the whisper- 
ing gallery of Europe," and there is a good deal of in- 
formation to be picked up there. I say "we" 
gathered some facts, but I had nothing to do with it. 
Billy had a few pearls bestowed upon him, which he 
promptly transferred to me. I find diplomats are not 
given to putting their trust in women. Billy is, 
fortunately, a newspaper man, and not a diplomat. I 
can imagine nothing worse than being married to a 
man who only tells you the things which he thinks 
he safely may, or the things he would tell anyone — 
which amounts to the same thing. 

Among the other qualities of a perfect diplomat 
which Mr. and Mrs. Egan possess, they have that of 
never making a "break." Therefore, they gave us 



10 An Uncensored Diary 

(principally me) what we needed — advice as to caution 
in speech, behaviour, facial expression, and etiquette, 
also warning us against writing anything down on 
paper. It's going to be hard on me. I never was 
born to be indefinite I am practising conversing 
diplomatically. 

*'Mrs. Bullitt, Verdun has been taken and Paris 
is about to surrender." 

"Really.'^ How curious. Battles are so interest- 
ing, aren't they.''" 

"Mrs. Bullitt, if it were not for American ammu- 
nition, the war would have ended in six months." 

"Yes, battles are dangerous, aren't they.''" 
"Whereas, I might mention our Spanish war and cer- 
tain famous German munition factories. So, the 
crest of idiotic amiability being reached, we move on 
to the weather. 

We oughtn't to stay here any longer, but we can't 
get up the courage to attack the frontier again, and 
every one tells us we won't get anything to eat in 
Germany — a fact substantiated by our own twenty 
hours' experience. Besides this, we're enjoying our- 
selves, which is a perfectly good reason for staying 
anywhere. 

Count Szechenyi, the Austro-Hungarian Min- 



An Uncensored Diary 11 

ister, thinks it would be a good plan for us to go to 
Vienna and Pest, as so little has been seen of them 
during the war. He has very kindly written to 
people there that we are coming. I played tennis 
with him this afternoon at the club, he in his sus- 
penders and monocle, and I in street clothes, with a 
pair of borrowed tennis shoes two inches too long on 
my feet, and a racket like a spoon, as a means of de- 
fence, in my hand. We have lived here so much as we 
live at home that I shan't write any more of Denmark. 
We dined at the Egans' last night. Mrs. Egan is 
famous for her dinners, and Mr. E's wine is supposed to 
be very fine, though I couldn't tell old Port from beer. 

Hotel Esplanadey Berlin, May 29th. 

Act of Caution No. 1 : 

I left what diary I had written in Denmark, where 
I'm sure of its neutrality not being violated. 

Evidently when we crossed the frontier before, they 
left undone a good many things which they might 
have done, but they weren't guilty of slouching on 
the job this time, and I'll bear testimony to it at the 
Golden Gate. They kept our passports as souve- 
nirs. It was as much as I could do to keep Billy from 
going to our Embassy at half-past eleven at night. 



12 An Uncensored Diary 

when we got to Berlin. I must say I should have 
liked to wrap up in the American flag and sleep on 
Mr. Gerard's doorstep myself. The inspection this 
time was really too disgusting to repeat. I decided 
that, if I ever again heard any one say: "It's our 
orders," I should kill him. Orders apparently mean: 
Be as nasty to the man who can't hit you back as your 
imagination will allow. An inspection at the frontier 
in war time is quite just — all one asks is to be treated 
with courtesy. Did we love the German military 
after this, and where is Billy's reasonableness now? 

We lunched at the Embassy the day after we got 
here. Mrs. Gerard is charming and Mr. Gerard one 
of the most amusing men I ever met. Brusque, frank, 
quick-witted, a typically judicial mind, and a typi- 
cally undiplomatic manner, he is the last person in 
the world whom a German would understand. His 
dry, slangy American humour, his sudden lapses into 
the comic in moments of soleninity, his irreverence 
for the great, shock the worthy German. That he 
treats the Emperor in any other way than as a busi- 
ness acquaintance is most unlikely. 

What the Gerards, or the other members of the 
Embassy, do goes over Berlin in ten minutes. Pack- 
ing has been their favourite indoor sport all winter. 



An Uncensored Diary 13 

K, wishing to be prepared against a rainy day, they 
hastily stow away a few articles of value and con- 
venience in a trunk, preparatory to making a hur- 
ried journey — as they imagine often they will do — 
the fact is known by every one in the city in half 
an hour. 

The Embassy is filled with Harvard secretaries, 
whose lips, as Mr. Egan says, are still wet with the 
milk of Groton. The ballroom is bulging with 
stenographers. Never did the world see its few re- 
maining diplomats so overworked. Instead of com- 
ing down and reading the papers for two hours a day, 
they now all work mornings, afternoons, and some- 
times evenings. 

June M. 
We have been here a week. We have given up the 
romantic idea of starving, and are managing to exist 
on four-course meals. Billy says he's not going to be 
the first to complain of the high price of caviar and 
pate de foie gras. This deprivation, and the re- 
moval of the English word "lift" from the elevator 
door, are the most striking signs of the war we have 
seen, so far. One does have to have bread cards and 
there's scarcely any butter, and next week we shall 



14 An Uncensored Diary 

get egg and meat cards, but as these are handed to 
one by the early morning waiter, it's not an in- 
convenience. 

Helfferich and Batocki have taken over the food 
supply so I don't suppose any more swine slaughter- 
ings a la Delbriick will go on. After all, a blockaded 
nation can't afford again to kill 350,000 pigs at once, 
because they've underrated the potato supply and 
think the pigs will eat up what's left. 

I had eggs and a glass of rdilk to-day, neither of 
which they say can be bought. Really, to the un- 
initiated, it looks as if Berlin could go on indefinitely 
with England's fleet strung around her neck — ^but the 
eye of the paying guest is deceived. The bread, 
butter, and meat lines are long. Women stand hours 
to get their weekly allowance of a walnut size of but- 
ter for each one in their family; children are happy, 
but thrive not, on jam and artificial honey. Many 
women wash their clothes but once in two weeks 
because, they say, it saves soap to do more at one 
time. You feel you're asking a great favour if you 
borrow the soap in a friend's house to wash your 
hands. 

I dropped in for supper, unexpectedly, the other 
night at a friend's flat; they said they had all they 



An Uneensored Diary 15 

could get to eat that day without paying half their 
yearly income for it. The fare was some large white 
balls which tasted like boiled dough, some little 
stewed prunes, and fried potatoes as a luxury. They 
scared me when they said the dough balls were a 
favourite German dish. You feel like saying: "I'll 
come to dinner if you'll first tell me what I'll have to 
eat. If my food's worse than yours, you win!" 
Housekeepers are only allowed half a pound of meat 
per person a week, and cream may be got by a 
doctor's prescription only. Coffee is half something 
else, and tea is dried strawberry leaves. "Did you 
ever imagine," they ask one, "that they would make 
so good a drink?" 

When I came over here, I decided that, by way of 
keeping myself occupied, I would look about to see 
what the women in Germany were doing during the 
war. I started with the refugees' department of the 
Red Cross. Having talked with a number of 
refugees from France, the result is that my illusions 
as to French chivalry have had a sad blow. The 
stories they have told me of their personal expe- 
riences I see no reason to doubt. One girl was gover- 
ness in a French family. The war broke out and 
orders to intern all Germans were issued. At ten 



16 An Uncensored Diary 

A. M. the girl was put in a cattle car labelled: "6 
chevaux ou 36 personnes." It is on such freight cars 
as this that detachments of the French army are 
conveyed toward the front. There were in the car 
fifty-six people, counting little children. Thirteen 
hours later they arrived at their station. During 
this time they had been given neither water nor food. 
On leaving the car, they had an hour's walk to the 
concentration camp. Many were by this time in a 
sad state of hunger and fatigue. For beds they were 
given straw to lie upon. It rained and they became 
wet. The sanitary appliances were unspeakable. 
In the morning they were given a small pitcher of 
water for washing. My friend begged for a larger 
bowl, which was brought her. Shortly after, she saw 
it being used for cooking and she did not know 
whether to give up washing, or eating, in the future. 
At eleven o'clock, they were given some unappetizing 
soup, which was the first food they had had in twenty- 
five hours. 

Mme. Kahres, another acquaintance of mine, is a 
German woman who lived in France twenty years. 
She loved the country dearly and speaks French like a 
native. When war broke out, she said she would 
stay and continue her work among the poor. She 



An Uncensored Diary 17 

said that she, and the other German women, were 
addressed in the streets as Orosse espSce de cochon 
prussienne, and other less complimentary epithets. 
One man, who was ordered to take her passport 
picture, shook his fist in her face, called her a Prussian 
pig, and said that the sooner all of her filthy brood 
were dead, the better. She is the gentlest soul im- 
aginable and had said nothing to occasion this out- 
burst. The poor woman left the sputtering photog- 
rapher, her knees shaking with rage and a pathetic 
helplessness. Her account of the concentration camp 
to which she was sent was no more pleasing, nor in- 
dicative of gallantry or politeness, than many others. 

"As to the lack of food in the camps, the over- 
crowding, and absence of bedding," she said, "I can 
only excuse the French by saying they lost their 
heads. For the rest, their treatment of us cannot be 
excused." She was greatly surprised that in Amer- 
ica we had escaped hearing these stories of the French 
concentration camps. The women and children 
were kept in them for three months and then sent 
back to Germany. Neither the English nor the Ger- 
mans and Austro-Hungarians interned women and 
children. 

We lunched at the Legation on Tuesday. 



18 An Uncensored Diary 

Countess is nice, but a little impressive. I'd 

forgive that if she didn't speak English with an accent 
and call a dinner jacket a "smoking" (pronouncing it 
smocking). American women are too adaptable. 
So many of them who live abroad, or marry foreigners, 
become so like the women of the country in which 
they live that one scarcely knows they are American. 
An exception is old Mme. de Hagerman-Lindencrone, 
of "The Courts of Memory" fame, who is as Ameri- 
can as on the day the good Lord made her, in spite of 
a lifetime spent in the company of emperors, queens, 
and princes of the blood. I told Baron Roeder that 
I delighted in Mme. de Hagerman's frank remarks 
about every one. He said she was certainly delight- 
ful but that she wasn't his notion of "frank," as she'd 
never in her life been known to say anything that got 
her into trouble. 

The papers have come, announcing a great Ger- 
man sea victory. They say the English have lost a 
tonnage of 132,400 and the Germans 28,000 tons, 
Berlin takes it calmly, few flags are out and there is no 
public rejoicing. Perhaps a few more people smile. 
This city is the gloomiest place I ever expect to have the 
misfortune of seeing. Billy says the atmosphere is 
like a mercury bath. 



An Uncensored Diary 19 

June 3d. 

To-day, the flags are all out for the naval victory, 
even the trams and buses are decorated. The Ger- 
mans didn't wish to celebrate until they were quite 
sure. They've made one or two mistakes, so they 
were cautious this time. The school-children take a 
real interest in German victories. They get a holi- 
day on the strength of one, and they measure the vic- 
tory only by the length of their holiday. The joy is 
slightly adulterated by having to go to school first and 
listen to a careful explanation of what they are about 
to celebrate. Their fondness for Hindenburg is quite 
immoderate. In the eyes of German children, a 
campaign against the Russians is a most praise- 
worthy undertaking. 

The great wooden statue of Hindenburg, encased in 
geranium plants and scaffolding, had many nails 
driven into it to-day. The statue is an unsightly 
thing, but it seems to appeal to the Berliners to buy a 
nail for the benefit of the Red Cross, climb the 
scaffolding, and hammer it in. 

This morning I went to the Central Labour Ex- 
change. Fraulein Dr. Klausner is head of the 
women's department, and as there is now scarcely 



20 An Uncensored Diary 

any men's department, she is practically running the 
whole thing. Dr. Klausner was villainously dressed. 
She wore her hair short, and acted with an energy I 
have rarely seen, but spoke with an intelligence which 
made me feel as if I'd better go back and begin with 
kindergarten again. In the Labour Exchange there 
is a big room divided into three sections: for skilled, 
semi-skilled, and unskilled workers. Before the war 
they averaged 200 applications a day in the women's 
department, and these women were given jobs in 
Berlin. In the first months of the war, from 3,000 to 
10,000 women came every day, demanding jobs any- 
where in Germany. In August, they were sent out on 
agricultural work, and the first of September they were 
called to the munition factories and to making army 
equipment and preparing food for the armies. Two or 
three hundred were sent out of Berlin daily. Many 
thousand women had been thrown out of work by the 
closing of the luxury factories in the first days of the 
war. It is impossible to tell how many more women 
are working now than before the war, as there 
are no statistics yet, and many women are not 
registered who are now attending to their husbands' 
businesses. The Berlin Labour Exchange fills from 
three to five hundred places a day, and has de- 



An Uncensored Diary 21 

mands exceeding that by from one thousand to four 
thousand. 

At first, BerHn sent to the provinces only those 
women whose children could be taken care of by rel- 
atives. Later, wages became high enough to enable 
women with one or two children to take them with 
them. The munition factories pay the highest 
wages. The average wage for these women now is 
about eight marks a day. In Germany, as in the 
other warring countries, there is little the women are 
not doing. Sturdy peasant girls pave the streets, dig 
ditches, lay pipes. Women drive the mail wagons 
and delivery wagons, deliver the post, work in open 
mines, work electric walking cranes in iron foundries, 
sell tickets and take tickets in railway stations, act as 
conductors in the subway — in fact, they do every- 
thing, from running their husbands' businesses and a 
large family to running a tramcar. 

Every sort of a job is to be obtained at the Labour 
Exchanges, all that I have mentioned as well as 
places for servants, governesses, shop-girls, hotel and 
restaurant servants. A record is kept of each person. 
Germans have a genius for card catalogues and 
records; they know where their applicants go, what 
they do, how they behave, etc. Since the war, the 



22 An Uncensored Diary 

Berlin Exchange has been running workshops, which 
I shall see another day. As the Exchanges know 
where in Germany labour is scarce and where plenti- 
ful, they keep the pressure equalized. 

We went to the theatre last night with Lithgow 
Osborne. Theatres and operas have been running 
full blast since the war. What we saw was an ex- 
quisite pantomime. Afterward we went to Richard's 
for supper. I was introduced to the famous German 
drink of the cafe-goer, champagne, with a peach in 
the bottom of the glass. Peaches cost only about a 
million dollars an ounce here, but still . . . After 
a while, we heard an angry bellowing from a German 
in the next room to us. Evidently the man had a 
grievance of a trying nature, for he continued to roar 
while waiters ran in and out. From the din we 
gathered that he had kissed a lady with whom he had 
been supping, and the fair one was then promptly put 
out of the restaurant. With that, the man stamped 
up and down and declared loudly that it was an 
accident which might have happened to any gentle- 
man. And they say these are emancipated days for 
the German woman! 

Lunched with the Jacksons. Mr. Jackson was Sec- 
retary of the Embassy here for years. He is pro- 



An Uncensored Diary 23 

German and is very popular in the country. The 
Germans trust him, Baron von Mumm told me. 
Baron and Baroness Roeder were there and Countess 
Gotzen. I asked Baron Roeder what he did and he 
said he was Master of Ceremonies at Court, and 
official introducer, and a lot of other things. He is 
about seventy-five, but he says he is going to the 
front if the war keeps up much longer. Already he 
has offered himself three times. His chief irritation 
against England is being cut off from his London 
tailor. Every German I meet out of uniform tells the 
same sad tale. The old gentleman said he thought 
the naval victory was due principally to Zeppelins. 
The Bluchers joined us for coffee. Count Blucher 
looks like the pictures of his famous grandparent. 

Princess said that his father is a dreadful old 

gentleman, fights with everyone, his son included, all 
the time. As the old Prince is eighty-five, the rela- 
tions had better run around and turn the other cheek 
before it's too late. 

Ju7ie 4tk. 
The English papers arrived in Germany to-day and 
announce that the German victory was scarcely a 
victory at all, and the Post even had the audacity to 



24 An Uncensored Diary 

call it an English victory. Both sides declare loudly 
that they were greatly outnumbered, each one in- 
sisting that the whole enemy fleet was engaged. Now, 
no one supposes, even in Germany, that the British 
blockade is broken, nor the fleet really weakened, but 
the Germans obviously, unless they are the most un- 
conscionable liars, have sunk a far greater tonnage 
than the English. Also I have heard, from diplomats 
here, that the English Government is furious with 
Admiral Beatty for engaging such a superior force 
without waiting for reinforcements. The Germans 
want to know, if it is an English victory, why the Ger- 
mans were the last on the spot and picked up the 
English sailors. 

We motored out to the military hospital at Buch 
with Dr. Rodiger and a boor of a magistrate. There 
are 2,000 soldiers there now, and the place is beauti- 
fully equipped and runs as smoothly as a giant engine. 
I was particularly interested in the baths, where men 
who are paralyzed from spinal wounds are kept sub- 
merged night and day up to their chins. One man 
whom I saw walking around had been in a bath nine 
months. It might look like any hospital were it not 
for the exercising rooms with their intricate machines, 
where stiffened and wounded .muscles are patiently 



An Uncensored Diary 25 

exercised and brought back to life. There are work- 
shops where men are taught new trades, if their 
injuries are such as to prevent their continuing their 
old ones. 

We saw the place from garret to cellar. If they 
start to take you over a building in this country, 
they don't do it casually. Theatre, kitchens, wards, 
operating rooms, with a dissertation on each. The 
band was playing "Un peu d'amour." Every Ger- 
man band plays "Un peu d'amour" — ^it's dreadful. 

After lunching with the doctors, we saw the Old 
People's Home, took a look from behind the fence at 
the insane asylum — a most beautiful set of buildings 
— and looked over the central heating, washing, and 
baking plants for the whole settlement — hospital, 
home, and asylum. How strong was the contrast be- 
tween this old people's home and some of the alms- 
houses I have seen in America. Here in the country 
outside Berlin were 1,100 aged Germans living in 
handsome modern buildings, surrounded by gardens 
and lawns. The horror of going to the almshouse is 
gone, in this country. The inmates live in the 
homes free and have their old-age pensions as spend- 
ing money. Berlin takes care of 8,000 old people in 
this way. 



26 An U licensor ed Diary 

Billy says the Germans are the most moral people 
in the world when it comes to dealing with Germans, 
and the most immoral in their dealings with the rest 
of the world. It's quite true. A German would 
weep with pain if he saw our almshouses or our slums; 
or realized that we didn't have federal workmen's 
compensation — and didn't carry out the law when we 
do have it in a State — or that we don't always pro- 
tect machinery for the workers. They hold the 
point of view, which religious sects are growing out of: 
Anything that added to the glory of God used to be 
right — what adds to the glory of Germany is right. 

However — ^back to our inspection of intensified 
civilization- I no longer retained the use of my legs, 
but the men still had strength for a large municipal 
garden. I sat under a tree and ate cherries. The 
garden was worked by Russian prisoners. They seem 
to make clever and willing farmers. Someone told 
me orders were out to capture several thousand more 
Russians, as they want them for planting and the 
harvest. Frenchmen won't work. They get too 
homesick. Apparently the Russians make successful 
garbage men, as one sees no others in Berlin. They 
go without a guard. 

We staggered in to Countess 's to tea late in 



An Uncensored Diary 27 

the afternoon. She told me how she brought up 
Hilda, her daughter. Hilda is a little matter of 
six feet high. Everyone is afraid of her, and her 
mama won't let her go up in the hotel lift alone for 
fear something will happen to her. As her last 
offence was to refuse to let the Kaiser kiss her — he 
being her godfather and claiming parental privileges 
— it would seem she could take care of herself. 

June 6th. 

The Roeders for tea. Old Baron R. talked politics 
to us. 

" The Kaiser didn't want the war," he said. **^He 
doesn't belong to the Junker party and he doesn't 
want annexation, nor does he believe in the Tirpitz 
policy. He belongs to the Liberals and is strongly 
supported by the Socialists owing to his demo- 
cratic tendencies. The Ministry and the Chancellor 
cannot be overthrown unless the Kaiser wishes it. 
Many Germans tell us that the Chancellor will 
resign if the Emperor is persuaded to adopt un- 
restricted U-boat warfare again — that is the "sink 
without warning" policy. Baron Roeder says that 
Bethmann-Hollweg will not resign because, no 
matter what any one says or thinks, as a matter of 



28 An Uncensored Diary 

fact the Chancellor is responsible to the Emperor 
alone and not to the people, and until the Emperor 
tires of him he will stay in office. 

"If he should die," continued Baron Roeder, 
"and the conservative Crown Prince were to come into 
power and appoint a Junker chancellor and ministry, 
it would mean the ruin of Germany and the pursuit 
of a reckless policy of annexation, which would only 
bring the country into another war. The Kaiser, and 
the greater part of intelligent Germany, do not wish 
to keep Belgium and northern France. They want 
only two or three miles in the Vosges hills so that, if 
war comes again, our armies will not have to fight their 
way uphill. They will not give back Alsace-Lorraine. 
For Poland and Finland, they wish autonomy under a 
German or an Austrian prince, while the Kurland 
they would annex to Germany. Of course Germany 
wants her colonies back. What she wants in Mesopo- 
tamia is hard to say as yet but, if the Allies take a 
share, Germany wishes her portion." . 

We said the Germans had told us: "Poland to the 
vanquished. Poland would be such a trouble to 
any one that she should be given away as a punish- 
ment to the country acquiring her." 

"True enough," said Roeder. "She would always 



An Uncensored Diary 29 

side with the country who didn't own her. The 
most fooHsh thing I have ever known is this war!" 
The old gentleman waved his hands. "Everyone 
is being ruined." 
/ "Why doesn't the Government make known its 
plan of evacuating Belgium then?" we asked. 

"I have urged it," he answered, "but the military 
party won't allow it. They say we must hold it as 
hostage for our colonies, and also they say the Allies 
would use all the troops they are putting against us 
there, in Belgium, for something else more danger- 
ous to us if they knew we were going to get out any- 
way." 

To crush Germany, to beat her to her knees, or to 
starve her out, seems to me impossible. She gives 
one the impression of amazing strength. Although 
I feel that efficiency is the one crime worse than the 
seven deadly sins put together, and the only thing no 
one should ever be forgiven for, I realize that it is a 
terrible weapon. It isn't "in" any other country to 
fight a war the way the Germans are doing it. Food 
is going to be low and everyone is going to feel it, 
but they are not going to get to the starvation point, 
they are too careful to allow it. Imagine people in 
New York paying any attention if they were ordered 



30 An Uncensored Diary 

not to serve milk before eleven o'clock on three days 
in the week, or if they were told not to cook with fat, 
even if they had it, on two days in the week! They 
would get up particularly early in order to be able 
to do both. 

It's foolish to talk of ruining Germany. She is 
too valuable to be ruined. And Germany doesn't 
want to rule the world. She's nothing compared to 
England when it comes to that. Bernhardi fright- 
ened everyone outside Germany. The Germans 
haven't read his book. It is unfortunate for Ger- 
many that she started her colonial policy when it 
had been out of fashion for a year or two — everyone 
else having got what they wanted most — but it's 
rather natural, and not a new idea for her to want 
colonies. 

I wish I knew how this war started — ^just now, I 
believe that Germany was in the grip of a false 
nightmare. She believed the world was against her 
and about to pounce upon her neck. Therefore 
she armed and prepared herself to such an extent as 
no one had ever seen. Possessed of this conviction, 
she jumped first into this war, whipped into still 
more violent action by the Russians mobilizing on 
her frontier. If one knew whether Germany knew 



An U licensor ed Diary 31 

beforehand of the Austrian note to Serbia one 
would know better just how deHberately Germany 
went into this. If there had been one powerful, 
far-seeing man in any of the countries, the war 
would not have happened. But there is no use go- 
ing over the diplomatic correspondence here. 

June 7th. 

We went to a secessionist exhibition to-day. 
There were few pictures. The one blessing of this 
war is that it has reduced the number of futurist 
paintings. In another larger and saner exhibition, 
we were surprised to find such a small number of war 
pictures. They have painted everything but war, 
and there is little horror here, and no sentimentality. 
There was one picture of the fall of Maubeuge which 
Billy insisted he was going to buy. It was at least 
twelve by fifteen feet and I had the most dreadful 
time persuading him that proud Frenchmen in red 
trousers and relentless, strong-looking Germans 
wouldn't do in full size in a private house. 

Tea with an artist from Munich, and some others. 
Major Herewarth-Bittenfeld, former Military At- 
tache in Washington, was talking to me about the 
Panama Canal. 



32 An Uncensored Diary 

" It's of no use to you strategically. You don't own 
the land up to it. Imagine our holding the Kiel 
Canal without Schleswig-Holstein ! It's as if you were 
writing a book and began at the end. Watch out 
someone does not write the beginning for you ! " 

Apparently the Germans would be quite willing 
for us to take Mexico. It sounds to them so logical. 

We heard to-day the A. B. C countries sent a note 
to Germany, saying they would seize German ships 
in their ports if America and Germany went to war. 
I believe Brazil would do it. The Germans spend 
a lot of money every year on German schools in 
Brazil, but they don't seem to gain much of a footing 
there. 

June 8th. 

Lord Kitchener and his staff have gone down on 
the cruiser Hampshire, They do not report how it 
was sunk. General Ellershaw was drowned with 
him. The English papers have not come yet, so we 
don't know how they are taking this blow across 
the Channel. The papers are always five or six days 
late and it is hard to get them. They are to be 
found only in the large hotels and a few other places. 

I met Countess Bliicher talking to that mad Irish- 



An Uncensored Diary 33 

American, John Gaffney. He was removed from 
his consulship at Munich for being un-neutral, so 
now he is in a white rage at the President. He says 
he is the only American who has been fair to the 
Germans and that he never was un-neutral. Both 
Countess Bliicher and Gaffney were in a great state of 
mind over Casement. Gaffney says he is a hero who 
sacrificed himself for his country, and Countess 
Blucher that he is a lifelong friend and therefore must 
be got off from hanging, whatever he has done. She 
has written a letter to England, saying Casement is 
mad, in hope that it may help to save him. 

"I don't fancy he will like that — coming from me," 
she said, "but it was the only thing I could think of 
doing." 

I asked Count Blucher when he thought the war 
would end, and he said: "When Russia is spent." 
I said that sounded rather pessimistic. 

"No," he said. "I think we can wear her out and 
then get a port on the Baltic." 

Personally, I can't quite see any one exhausting 
Russia yet awhile. 

I asked him why they didn't stop pounding Ver- 
dun and go after Riga, but he didn't know the an- 
swer. All Germany professes the greatest admira- 



34 An Uncensored Diary 

tion for France and says what a tragedy it is that she 
is now dead and gone and useless. They might 
take Verdun before they count France out. 

Dined last night with Countess Gotzen. I sat 
between a Spaniard and Prince Christian of Hesse. 
TJie Spaniard was a detestable little thing, and Prince 
Christian had tonsilitis and thought he was going to 
die, so I didn't get much entertainment out of him, 
either. Xater on we changed seats and I drew a fat 
and pleasant Bavarian, who had known my aunt 
in America. I asked him what his name was and 
he said they called him "Booby." I said I might 
get to that in time but I had to have something else 
to tide Tne over. After a few Christian names, I 
ran him down to his visiting card and Baron von 
Papius. 

Billy is reading finance reports. The Reichsbank 
has not nearly run over the gold reserve yet. But it 
issues notes on baby carriages, false teeth, and hair. 
The bank must be doing the ash-man out of business. 

Went to the refugee department of the Red Cross. 
Frau Kahres took me about. The refugees here 
now are principally from Russia and France, some 
from England. The great number of East Prussians 
that fled before the Russian invasion have gone back 



An Uncensored Diary 35 

to their homes. The tales they told of Russian 
cruelty were not to be equalled by the Inquisition. 
Sisters meet the fugitives at the stations and tell 
them where they can get lodgings. There has been 
the greatest difficulty in finding places for the 
thousands of homeless, penniless fugitives to live in. 
At the Criminal Courts Building have been housed 
and fed several thousands at the price of one mark a 
day. The courtrooms are turned into dormitories, 
and small rooms given to families. Prison cots are 
used and the place is bare but it is at least a shelter. 
The more well-to-do are directed to other places. 
One woman took expensive rooms at a large hotel. 
She dined to the tune of forty marks a meal and 
bought rich furs. On former visits she had always 
paid her bills, so the stores and hotel gave her credit. 
The bill this time she brought to the Red Cross. 
Frau Kahres questioned her in heated tones. She 
said she had been the mistress of an English duke for 
twenty years and could not live as the Red Cross 
directed! She would die in a quiet and nice home! 
She must have light and life! Mein Gott ! What 
did they expect of her? Wasn't the life of a refugee 
hard enough as it was? 

All refugees report to this department. They 



36 An Uncensored Diary 

give their histories, and work is found for them. If 
they are ill, the doctor examines them. Old people 
and sick people are often sent to the mountains, where 
the department keeps two small hotels and lodging 
rooms. The women knit and sew here and the men 
work at boot-making and the like. 

In the refugee building in Berlin is a much over- 
worked dentist. There has been a terrible run on 
false teeth; everyone wants them for nothing when 
they have the chance. The dentist now has instruc- 
tions to supply only the ones needed. 

"I tell the people," said Frau Kahres, "that I 
want new ones myself, but I do not get them now in 
war time." Maybe the refugees have heard of the 
bank notes issued on this article. 

The Chancellor has left off fighting the Conserva- 
tives about annexation, and Batocki talks about 
food. He urges the people not to expect too much. 
I don't imagine they do, as I saw meat lines on every 
block in the north of Berlin this morning, and a po- 
liceman for each meat shop. The women looked 
patient enough. 

Had tea with Countess Sehr-Thoss, an American. 
She is charming. When I admired an old painting on 
her drawing-room wall, she said: "Yes. I bought 



An Uncensored Diary 37 

that with 2,000 marks sent me by my old uncle to 
buy eggs. He wrote he heard in America we were 
paying five dollars apiece for eggs and thought I 
might not be able to afford them!" 

The Duchess of Croy came bounding in, looking 
most exuberant and American. I liked her, she is so 
unaffected. 

Count Rodern, Secretary of the Treasury, says 
England is spending $20,000,000 a day; France, 
$12,000,000; and Germany $14,000,000 on the war. 

The Germans admit, in what Billy calls "a piece 
of reptile press," the loss of two more ships, dread- 
noughts. This brings their losses up to 60,000 tons. 

June 9th. 
Went this morning to a Jugendheim in Charlotten- 
burg. Charlottenburg is even more model and pro- 
gressive and socially reformed than the rest of Ber- 
lin, so I spent an hour, under the tutelage of Frau 
Keller, in being impressed with it. This Jugendheim 
is a combination nursery, kindergarten, school, 
and training school for household servants, baby- 
nurses, and kindergarten teachers. Working moth- 
ers bring their children here at eight in the morning 
and fetch them away at six in the evening. The 



38 An Uncensored Diary 

babies are bathed and dressed in clean clothes, and 
are napped and fed and doctored. Learning is made 
so pleasant that the children attack anything from 
walking to geography with equal zest. In one 
room, a number of pink-clad infants were having a 
riotously good time rolling about the floor. As 
soon as the children are old enough, they are taught 
to use their hands at some game. They sit on little 
painted chairs at a low table and play with coloured 
paper and crayons. At the proper hour they are 
fed with milk or soup, at another hour they go into 
a garden to play, then they come back and take a 
nap on a rope mat swung in the air. The children are 
divided into small groups, each with a teacher and a 
separate room, the object being to give them individ- 
ual attention and not bring them all up alike. Still 
older children, besides having regular lessons, work 
at making baskets, building and furnishing little 
houses, using the wood of cigar boxes. Anything 
to make them use their hands well. I should have 
liked to play a long time with the children, but my 
guide understood I came there to inspect, so she saw 
that I did it. 

A record of each child is kept and visits paid in the 
homes by the teachers. They find out whether the 



An Uncensored Diary 39 

children shall be allowed to come to school and 
whether the family is able to pay. The girls who are 
learning to teach children, after the manner of this 
school, all pay — they being of a more well-to-do class. 
Many of them live in the building as in a sort of 
boarding school and the prices are low. One pays 
for the year's board and lodging from 1,000 to 1,800 
marks. Downstairs is a central cooking station, 
where lunch is prepared and sent out to 2,000 children 
in Charlottenburg. Luncheon is always in the form 
of soup, different each day, and particularly different 
in that it's made from a doctor's prescription instead 
of a cook-book. There is no doubt about these 
children getting the proper number of calories per 
spoonful! This school is run by private funds, with 
a smaU municipal subsidy, and is the largest of eigh- 
teen in Charlottenburg. 

Many children are sent to the country in the 
summer by the municipality. Those wishing to go 
must first be examined by a doctor and only the ones 
are chosen who seem run down and to need a change. 
This year they expected the percentage to be much 
higher than usual, but Frau Rathenau, of the Nation- 
aler Frauendienst, told me they were greatly astonished 
to find it practically the same. This does not look 



40 An Uncensored Diary 

as if the children of Berlin were starving. Many 
more children are sent out, however, for the authori- 
ties wish them to have the food which is more easily 
obtained in the country. Even the peasants in 
Germany seem to wish to do their part to help in the 
war. They have offered to take children into their 
homes, girls in particular, as they say boys are a 
nuisance. Letters are sent home by the youngsters 
full of excitement over eggs and butter and milk. 
Between the State and the City, a soldier's wife 
gets $14 a month for each child. When peasants 
take a child to live with them, the peasant and not 
the mother gets the money. It is an astonishing 
race. I cannot help but admire. 

June 10th. 
Went last night to Wansee to dine with the 
Hahns, catching the train in our customary manner 
as it moved out of the station. Hahn is about 
twenty-six years old, large and preoccupied, with 
the weight and fate of nations upon his heavy 
shoulders. His mouth is large and his brown eyes 
ringed with black. The back of his head is flat and 
Prussian, and his intensity shows in his voice and 
excitable hands. Hahn's mother is Polish, hand- 



An Uncensored Diary 41 

some, emotional, and friendly. She walked arm in 
arm with me around her garden and told me of her 
two sons in the war. Neither of them is an officer, as 
the family is Jewish and they won't give Jews com- 
missions. The youngest boy went out at seventeen, 
when the war began, and tears came into Frau Hahn's 
eyes when she said she had no word from him for a 
week. 

Just then the maid brought two letters. "Oh, 
you have brought me luck!" she cried. "From 
both my boys!" and she kissed the envelopes. 

The eldest son, our friend, is working on his own 
hook at anything he can do to help secure peace. 
They say he has influence. Hahn believes peace 
could have been made a year ago and thinks it only 
madness not to speak out frankly now. Bethmann- 
HoUweg, he says, is a brilliant man but, believing 
himself only a representative of the people, follows, 
instead of leading, public opinion. Hahn is liberal 
indeed. He wishes to see his countrymen out of 
Belgium and northern France with all possible 
speed. He wishes Germany had never taken Alsace- 
Lorraine, but now that they have, says for psycholog- 
ical reasons, they cannot be given up. (Of course 
coaJ mines may be psychological, but it's a new name 



42 An Uncensored Diary 

for them.) He would give back the northern part of 
Schleswig-Holstein, where some 100,000 Danes are 
living. He would have the Finns and Poles, and per- 
haps the White Russians, autonomous, each nation- 
ality under its own prince. He wishes an alliance 
between America, Germany, England, and France 
in order that Russia may be kept from squeezing the 
life out of all of them at some future date. 

"If Russia could be broken up into smaller states, 
the world would be safe," said he. 

A doctor and several musicians are the only 
Germans I have seen who wish to carry ruthlessness 
to the bitter end, and the Hahns are the other extreme. 
They would divide up the world, most of Germany 
included, and hand autonomy around on a platter. 
Hahn took a sick Englishman out of prison camp 
and kept him for six months in his house. 

The real flaw in the minds of all Germans to whom 
we have talked is the fact that none of them believe 
that any nation can be depended on to keep its word, 
and not to break a treaty. They simply do not 
expect it — ^for which of course they have more than 
one reason. 

We went sailing after dinner. I really admire the 
Germans now for the clever way in which they reef 



An Uncensored Diary 43 

a sail, simply by working a little crank at the Jaws of 
the boom and winding the canvas around the boom. 
The jib reefs the same way. It only takes a second 
and one does not have to take in the sail. I must rig 
my boat this way; it would add at least ten years to 
my life, as I get caught in a hurricane about three 
times a week all summer and break my fingers to 
bits tying nettles. 

Saw Fraulein Marelle and Fraulein Schulhoff, of 
the Lyceum Club, this morning. They were telling 
us stories of the invasion of East Prussia. Fraulein 
Marelle's first cousin owns large estates there and 
has kept her supplied with news. By a miracle, his 
castle and land were left untouched. He says he 
cannot understand it. He stayed there himself and 
was ready to defend his place against the whole 
Russian army. They destroyed everything up to his 
territory, and then stopped. 

One lady, whom Fraulein Marelle knows, a Frau 
von Bieberstein, had her chateau cut to ribbons. Her 
tapestry chairs were sliced up with knives, her china 
and mirrors broken, her beautiful chapel knocked to 
pieces, her beds ripped up and the feathers scattered 
from garret to cellar. It was rather queer to hear 
this tale from a German woman after Mme. Huard*s 



44 An Uncensored Diary 

tale of the wreck of her chateau in northern France 
by the Germans. 

They told me, too, of a nurse, a friend of theirs, 
who had gone to Russia. There she found, among 
other things, a carload of children, eighty in number, 
all dead of starvation. The Russians had put them 
in the car, sidetracked it, and forgotten it. Some 
other cars were found containing 200 people, all dead 
but one child in its mother's arms. The nurse saw 
the Czarina and told her of these, and many other 
things, and she said the Empress burst into tears. 
Well she might! 

The Germans are told that if the Russians get into 
East Prussia again, they are to send the women away 
immediately — those who stay are all outraged. 

This same cousin writes Fraulein Marelle that the 
German army is planting grain right up to the firing 
line. 

The Germans have a novel and highly effective 
way of restoring their destroyed property in East 
Prussia. The Russians did not leave one stone upon 
another, where they found several together, and I 
imagine that, when they found a single stone, this 
they rolled away. Every destroyed village or town 
in East Prussia is adopted by some German city, or 



An Uncensored Diary 45 

community. The foster parent calls itself god- 
mother of the destroyed district it picks out, and 
undertakes to rebuild and re-stock its godchild. 
The guardianship is to last indefinitely until all is 
quite right again. Berhn took the district of Ortels- 
burg and its thirty-two villages under her wing. 
Unlike the old woman who lived in a shoe, she knows 
just what to do for the 1,100 children in the district. 
She sends architects to build up the houses, bed- 
clothing — ^two sets for each bed — wearing apparel, 
and so on. The clothes are sent through the Lyceum 
Club. The good ladies belonging to the Club had 
proved themselves so capable in provisioning one 
village that BerKn handed them 12,500 marks, and 
said : " Take charge of this for the city." So energetic 
were they, that they even sent toys and books to the 
children for Christmas. 

The members of this Lyceum Club are all writers, 
painters, or musicians. Their object before the war 
was to help on the struggling genius, and encourage 
the arts. There are Lyceum Clubs in London, Paris, 
and Berhn. Since the war, their object has been to 
help foreigners in their cities, be they friends or 
enemies. Paris, they tell me, is falling somewhat 
short in loving her enemies, but London is doing 



46 An Uncensored Diary 

nobly. Fraulein Schulhoff told me her dear friend, 
Mrs. Asquith, was even being censured in the Press 
as a traitress, for giving so much assistance to the 
wives and daughters of her enemies. The Berlin 
Lyceum Club now works in cooperation with the 
Nationaler Frauendienst. 

June 11th. 

We got six London Times from Kirk. The differ- 
ence with which the announcements of the sea fight 
are made in English and in German newspapers is 
curious. The English have headlines: "Six British 
cruisers sunk" — "Heavy losses." "Eight destroy- 
ers sunk." The Germans have no headlines, par- 
ticularly they do not thrust their sunken ships upon 
the eye as do the English. The loss of the Liitzow, 
the largest ship in their fleet, was not announced until 
four days after the rest, and that in small type at the 
end of a long column summarizing the British losses. 

The Russian offensive seems to be of some worth. 
They claim 480 captured oflBcers and 25,000 men. 
At least they must have some fraction of that 
number. 

Dinner at the Esplanade to-night was really too 
awful. We had neither meat nor bread cards, so 



An Uncensored Diary 47 

were reduced to a dish called: "lost eggs," and as- 
paragus. The eggs were lost in some dreadful vege- 
table and the asparagus was that fat white and taste- 
less stuff they grow here. Billy remarked that the 
sauce hollandaise must have been difficult to make 
without either butter, eggs, or olive oil, and his tea, 
he said, reminded him of when his nurse used to stick 
her finger in a cup of hot water and tell him to 
"drink his tea. Dearie." I had apricots for dessert 
and ate a great number; that they had begun to 
ferment was no longer a drawback — at least they 
tasted of something. 

They are going to oblige one to have cards for 
clothes now. Billy says he wants to know how the 
city authorities are going to know when he needs a 
new undershirt. 

June 12th. 

No German teacher as yet, which makes things 
difficult, for I have to go all over the city by myself. 
I can ask the way to a certain street, and can say 
danhe fieldmouse for their answer, but can never, 
under any circumstances, understand what they say, 
and have to go on asking until someone points. 

Went to tea with Mrs. Oppenheim. She, like 



48 An Uncensored Diary 

many other American women with German hus- 
bands, is more violently pro-German and anti- 
English than the Germans themselves. Americans 
seem unhappy unless they can go to extremes. I 
admired a cat she had — the most peculiar animal it 
was. 

"Yes," she said. "He is Siamese." 

"But where did you get him; here.''" I asked. 

"No," she answered most reluctantly, "I am 
afraid Lord Kitchener gave him to me." 

"Well, after all," said I, "he might have come 
from a more unworthy source!" 

" I do not know," she said. 

I asked her why she didn't keep it in a barbed-wire 
cage and feed it prisoner's rations. 

Later I remarked that I found an old wooden set- 
tee she had, charming. 

"I regret to say," said she, "that it is English." 

I told her that, if it worried her, I would buy aU 
her English furniture at half price. "If you are 
really loyal," I added, "you will give it to me!" 
She did not mind my laughing at her about the cat 
and the furniture, but she really was quite serious 
about them. 

Her sixteen-year-old daughter bobbed to me and 



An Uncensored Diary 49 

kissed my hand. I must say it is a shock when they 
do it. 

Agatha Grabish called this morning. She has been 
to East Prussia. One old woman she talked to said 
she had stayed for the first Russian invasion. 

" Why ? " Agatha asked her. 

"Well," she said, "my bread was baking when the 
others started to go, and I didn't want to leave it. 
But I might just as well have," she added, "because 
the Russians came in and ate it all up as soon as I 
took it out of the oven." 

We went to the Zoo to see the holiday crowd. 
Every soldier who had a sweetheart, and every 
mother and father with a child was there. I am 
sure they must be skimping dreadfully on the meat 
for the lions and tigers — the poor beasts were so 
thin, all their bones were sticking out, while those 
disgusting hippopotami, that feed on hay, looked as 
if they would explode if they ate another mouthful. 

June IJi-th. 

Went to see Frau Levi Rathenau this morning, 
to learn about the Nationaler Frauendienst. 

The German woman in wartime is not primi- 
tive. Neither is she simply an excellent and useful 



50 An Uncensored Diary 

creature carrying six bundles and a baby as she walks 
beside a tightly uniformed and empty-handed hus- 
band, nor one who naturally ojffers the only arm- 
chair and sofa cushion to her lord and master or 
silently seeks the upper berth in a sleeping car. To 
persons who have this view of German woman- 
hood it is a shock to see women at the heads of 
numberless German enterprises, some of nation-wide 
scope. 

In Berlin the modern woman handles anything 
from a large office force to a tramcar, and, un- 
disputed, uses the talent for organization which is so 
deeply rooted in German nature. 

Every woman in Germany is fighting this war. 
Not only does she send her husband out to be killed, 
but she steps into his place when he has gone. 
With his work to do, she has still her own — to take 
care of his house and bring up his children. 

Individually, this would be impossible, but collec- 
tively it is possible. There are innumerable organi- 
zations, war kitchens, central cooking stations, sup- 
ply stations, day nurseries, kindergartens, work- 
shops, Red Cross stations, refugee committees, 
leagues of housewives, institutions for disabled 
soldiers. The great thing is that each branch the 



An Uncensored Diary 51 

women take up is systematically run and that they 
work in cooperation. 

The largest of these women's organizations to-day 
is the Nationaler Frauendienst, or National Women's 
Service League. 

There is little reminiscent of the American Society 
Woman's Relief Committee about either Dr. Ger- 
trude Baumer or Frau Levi Rathenau. Doctor 
Baumer is the leader of the woman's movement of 
Germany, and the names of these two women are as 
familiar in Germany as are the names of Miss Jane 
Addams and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in America. 

Neither of these ladies is at the head of the Service 
League because she is a rich man's wife or because 
it is rather the vogue this year to be interested in 
social work. 

Their oflBce is like the railroad magnate's office 
in a modern drama. At an appointed hour one is 
ushered in, through several rooms of clerks and 
stenographers. Doctor Baumer is at a large table, 
dictating. The inevitable telephone is at her elbow. 
Handshakes. A chair is offered, sat upon, and one's 
business is asked. The cigars, which come on the 
stage at this moment, are omitted. The inevitable 
telephone rings frequently during the interview and is 



52 An Uncensored Diary 

answered with a minimum number of words. Wo- 
men secretaries bring papers to be signed after rapid 
and comprehensive glances at contents. Low-toned 
questions are replied to after a second's efficient 
thought. 

"The Nationaler Frauendienst," explained Frau 
Rathenau, "was organized on July 31, 1914, by Doc- 
tor Baumer and me. Our object was to help neces- 
sitous wives and children of our soldiers all over 
Germany by giving them advice. 

"We sent prominent women in every city of the 
empire a programme which explained the work we 
wished them to do and told them how to organize. 
In Berlin we called in delegates from the big women's 
clubs — literary, conservative, socialistic, Jewish, 
Catholic, and liberal, and founded our central com- 
mittee of 30 women. Propaganda of any kind was 
forbidden." 

One thinks of a more famous coalition and wonders if 
30 members are more conducive to harmony than 23. 

* ' We presented our programme to the city authorities 
in Berlin," Frau Rathenau continued. "They ap- 
proved of our plans and consented to pay all our 
office expenses. Later, when food became scarce, 
they commenced giving us $20,000 a month for food. 



An Uncensored Diary 53 

The rest of our money comes from private contribu- 
tions. 

"Om* work is in three directions: First, to help the 
soldiers' wives; second, to help their widows and chil- 
dren; third, to aid in the question of their food supply. 

"There are in Berlin 23 bureaus from which the 
' Ej-iegsunterstuetzung,' or war relief, is given out. 
This is the allowance to which common soldiers* 
wives are entitled from the city and the State; it 
amounts to 30 marks a month for a woman and 14 
marks for each child. 

"The Nationaler Frauendienst has a branch 
near each of these bureaus taking in the same dis- 
trict, and the two chief women of each branch sit 
on the Kriegsunterstuetzung Committee of that 
district. They know the history of every family 
which gets the war pension and advise the committee 
when this money is insufficient. In such cases Ber- 
lin gives an added 18 marks to women without 
children and lesser sums to women who receive the 
14 marks from the State and city for each child. 
Thus a woman with three children may get 83 marks 
a month and none of it from charity." 

In the first few weeks of the war hundreds of 
women and girls lost their jobs through the closing 



54 An Uncensored Diary 

of factories that make luxuries. Seeing advice ad- 
vertised free by the Service League, they rushed to 
the offices in hordes. 

They were advised what kind of work to do and 
sent to the Labour Exchange to get it. Workshops 
were opened where they were taught many of the 
new trades so fast opening to women. Some are 
kept on in the shops and paid the regular wage, while 
many go out to the factories. Women who have 
taken over their husbands' businesses receive expert 
advice. 

Wives come and ask advice for all manner of 
household matters — how to cook in the new cooking 
boxes; how to cook at all without butter, flour, or fat; 
what to do with their children when they are good, 
bad, indifferent, or sick; what to do with the children 
when they are at work; how to pay their rent and 
food bills now that they no longer have their hus- 
bands' wages. 

The women who stream in all day are taken to 
tables and get individual attention. Exhaustive 
and fatally correct histories of each family are kept. 
They are visited in their homes and instructed there 
by ladies of the Service League. They cannot ask 
help outside their own district. No chance is there 



An Uncensored Diary 55 

for an ambitious family to gain a living by a gentle 
game of graft. The Nationaler Frauendienst is hus- 
band, brother, and watchful-eyed keeper to its clients. 

If they need food and cannot pay for it, cards 
are given out for the particular thing they want. 
The stores take these and are reimbursed by the 
Service League. More than $250,000 worth of food 
cards had been given out up to January 1, 1916. 

The Nationaler Frauendienst realized at the be- 
ginning of the war that there would be trouble with 
the food supply. They asked the Government if 
they might run a campaign to teach the women how 
to manage with shortened rations. The Govern- 
ment refused on the ground that it would frighten 
the people. 

Soon, whether it frightened them or not, they had 
to know the truth and learn to economize. 

The Government permitted the Service League 
to ask all the cooks in Berlin to a meeting in the 
Reichstag (The Parliament Building). By this 
strategic move each cook instantly felt herself to be 
as important as Von Bethmann-Hollweg or any one 
else in the empire. They were convinced after an 
hour's talk that, of course, the army was important, 
but that they were really the ones to win the war 



56 An Uncensored Diary 

and that to wish for anything more than potato 
flour and glucose with which to cook was the height 
of absurdity. The only wonder was, if tea could 
be made so successfully from strawberry leaves, 
why they had never known it before ! 

The housewives were next treated to an attack 
of eloquence. They came to meetings all over the 
city and learned new methods of housekeeping. 
They learned, for instance, that to bake cake with 
either flour or eggs was the eighth of the deadly sins. 

The numbers of women, and men, too, who seek 
advice in the offices of the Nationaler Frauendienst 
give some idea of the size of the league. In Berlin 
alone, in January, 65,000 persons came; in May, 
49,000; the greater number coming naturally in 
the hard winter months. In the district of Nordring, 
which is composed entirely of working people, 800 
persons come to the office a week. 

The Nationaler Frauendienst is organized all over 
Germany in virtually the same manner as in Berlin. 
A description of its work in Berlin suffices as a de- 
scription of its work in every city. It does little 
work in the country except to send children from the 
city to holiday camps. 

The number seeking advice from the Service 



An Uncensored Diary 57 

League might deal a blow to tlie idea that there is a 
new independent German woman were it not for 
the fact that it is from women they get the advice. 
There is none of the I-don't-know-I'U-go-home-and- 
ask-Alec spirit about those in charge. A visit to 
them moves at about the same speed as a visit to 
Charles Schwab in the central office of the Bethlehem 
Steel Company. 

June 17th, 

"General Moltke drops dead," on the front page of 
the newspaper, and "Czernowitz falls," under him. 
Even though this is the third time for Czernowitz, 
there is still some interest shown in the evacuation. 
It strikes me that, for a country which everyone said 
was dead and gone, and which they had begun to 
divide up and partition around, the Russians are 
doing pretty well. 

I still venture to go about and meet "The Wo- 
men" (capital letters) of Germany. They attain a 
terrifyingly high pitch of intelligence but they are 
most unbeautiful. Their definition of clothes is, I 
presume, "A modest covering for the body, suffi- 
cient to protect it from the cold." Some of them 
dress in a sort of new art way but few of them seem to 
imagine that dressing well would detract nothing 



58 An Uncensored Diary 

from their intellectuality of appearance — on which 
they concentrate so heavily — and that it might add 
several cubits unto their charm. 

There was a mass meeting of Germany's most 
distinguished women at the Esplanade the other 
night — Dr. Gertrude Baumer, Dr. Lisa Salomon, 
and the rest. Doctor Baumer looks like a wonderful 
woman. There is a powerful compelling quietness 
about her which is magnetic. She was at the same 
table at which I was, and although she said nothing, 
I felt she was quite capable of taking Bethmann- 
Hollweg's place any time he wanted a rest. 

Some of the people would talk munitions in the 
most tactless manner. What fault is it of mine, I'd 
like to know, if du Pont and Mr. Schwab send shells 
and gunpowder. Baron Roeder said that, when he 
hears his countrymen spitting about munitions, he 
says: "Well, my dear fellow, you know the United 
States tried to get us to agree in The Hague Con- 
vention, that we would not supply munitions to 
belligerents, and we refused, so here we are now 
hoist by our own petard, so to speak, and there is no 
use your making a noise about it!" 

Of course the Germans never supplied munitions to 
any one, oh, no. They didn't make any money out 



An Uncensored Diary 59 

of the Spanish-American war, nor the Boer war, nor 
the Russo-Japanese war, and they didn't sell muni- 
tions to the Turks when they pretended to be friends 
with the Greeks, and they never thought of supplying 
Mexico with shells or guns, did they? . . . No j 
indeed, never ! 

Billy has been seeing bankers lately, to try and 
find out about the finances of the country. He 
talked to Havenstein, President of the Reichsbank, 
two hours yesterday, and with Von Gwinner, Direc- 
tor of the Deutsche Bank, one hour. I asked him 
how they treated him. 

"Von Gwinner saw through me," he said, laughing. 
"He asked me to tea, but Havenstein called out all 
the geheimraths in his employ and set them to making 
statistics for me! " 

Havenstein said peace would never be permanent 
until England was ready to recognize commercial 
competition on the basis of who worked the best, 
and he declared that whatever else the war was it was 
a blessing for German banking. This it is — appar- 
ently; but not really, of course. Money never cir- 
culated so freely; men are not hoarding it as they are 
said to be doing in France; and with every industry 
running full tilt a great deal of money is being made. 



60 An Uncensored Diary 

A copy of the Dresdnerbank's yearly report got 
into France, and the French declared that never had 
such a colossal lie been invented by the Germans as 
this. It was utterly impossible, said they, that Ger- 
man finances could be in such a visibly flourishing 
condition. 

Billy met Mr. Gerard in the street, just after he 
had seen Havenstein and Von Gwinner. B — said 
they had talked very frankly, and Mr. Gerard asked 
him if they had shown him the printing-press where 
they made the money. 

June 20th. 

Billy and I went to see Zimmermann in the Foreign 
Office. He, with Von Bethmann-HoUweg, Von Jagow 
Helfferich, and Falkenhayn, are running Germany^ 
Zimmermann is a large, blond man. His forehead is ex- 
ceptionally high and his cheeks much scarred by sword 
slashes. He is genial, calm, and although the busiest 
man in the Empire, quite unhurried. 

"I have just been seeing some bankers," said he. 
"We are negotiating another loan for our Turk- 
ish friends. Those people are always in need of 
money." 

Billy said it was a great imposition for us to take up 
his time, as he was probably very busy. He laughed 



An Uncensored Diary 61 

and declared he was glad to see us. I told him he 
was like Disraeli, who said he was not "unusually 
busy to-day" but "usually busy." 

Billy asked if the U-boat war was likely to be 
resumed. 

"That depends on Wilson," answered Zimmer- 
mann. "If he pushes England into obeying interna- 
tional law, we will not resume it. If he goes on 
doing nothing, as he has for some time, I cannot 
answer for what our mihtary and naval authori- 
ties will do." 

I said that Wilson was not likely to move a foot 
before the elections, and would Germany be willing 
to wait until November.'' 

Zimmermann shrugged his heavy shoulders. " That 
is a long time," said he. "We have enough subma- 
rines now." 

Altogether, he sounded rather ominous on this 
subject, but very likely he wishes American news- 
paper men to circulate the idea that Germany will 
do something drastic if America does not insist upon 
England's introducing a few of the elements of 
legality into her blockade, or at least insist that the 
neutral mails shall arrive at their destination. 

I asked him if he didn't think the war was going on 



62 An Uncensored Diary 

and on because no one would speak frankly of peace, 
and he said, "yes," but that Germany had said all 
she could. 

"All that is done if we mention peace," said he, 
"is for everyone to shout: 'The Germans are beaten; 
they can't go on any longer.' " 

Billy asked him whether peace could not be made 
now if the biggest men from each country were 
brought together. 

"Ah!" said Zimmermann. "If it were possible to 
have a small, absolutely secret meeting, then we 
probably could make peace now, but how is that to be 
managed? We cannot speak out frankly to the 
whole world, and how can one negotiate except 
pubHcly.?" 

We asked him whether Germany looked for a long 
peace after the war, and whether it would be on the 
grounds of great military strength and strong bound- 
aries, or on the basis of an international conciliatory 
body, or a treaty? 

He answered that nothing short of a United States 
of Europe would amount to anything, and seemed 
to possess the usual German skepticism of treaties. 

"We will have to have a United States of Europe 
some day, to enable us to compete economically with 



An Uncensored Diary 63 

America. That may come in eighty or one hundred 
years, but not in our Hfetime. If you would really 
develop your natural resources, we in EuTope would 
be helpless." 

I asked him why the men in the Government gave 
to American newspaper men interviews that either 
said nothing, or said things which were misunder- 
stood. 

Zimmermann answered that there was a great howl 
if they didn't give interviews, and that of course they 
did not know how to manage public opinion in Amer- 
ica, so they depended upon the newspaper men to put 
things so that Americans would understand pro- 
perly. 

It struck me that it was a rather risky business for 
Von Bethmann-HoUweg, or Zimmermann, to trust 
their similes and figures of speech in the hands of Von 
Wiegand. Look what he did in publishing the 
Chancellor's remark about "the map of Europe as 
it stands to-day." If he didn't understand what that 
meant, he should have said so and "permitted him- 
self to remark" something more sensible and less 
subservient to the Chancellor than he did. 

Went to a war kitchen — the one run by Americans. 
It would be rather irritating to our anti-German na- 



64 An Uncensored Diary 

tion to know that the American kitchen was the best 
in Berlin and that all food there was free! 

June 22d. 
I went to several kitchens yesterday — Mittlestands- 
kiichen, they are called. A man named Abraham 
started them in the beginning of the war. They 
are all over the city, for children and for adults. 
Abraham poses as a philanthropist, but they say his 
charity is of the paying kind, and he is hated accord- 
ingly. I do not see, however, how he can make 
much money; people come to his kitchens in thou- 
sands and they pay only sixty pfennigs (fifteen cents) 
for soup, a rich-looking stew, and a great plate of 
barley and cherries, or some other sweet. The 
restaurants almost pay for themselves, for the food is 
sold them at cost by the city, and most of the ser- 
vice is voluntary work by ladies who wish to help. 
Whatever the cost is, it is borne by private individ- 
uals, spurred on by Father Abraham. One sees, not 
only middle-class people eating in the kitchens, but 
some quite poor people as well, and also some who 
look of the upper middle class. I went with an old 
American lady missionary; she is a spry old thing 
of seventy years, who works her head off for the 



An Uncensored Diary 65 

Germans and finds it vastly humorous that they 
call her the "high well-born-coUector-of-old-clothes- 
for-the-poor." 

Went to Frau Plotow's to tea. She is another 
lively septogenarian. I liked her a great deal, but 
her cake did not have any sugar in it — that's a pleas- 
ant little surprise one has nowadays. Several people 
came to tea with me the other day and it was quite 
awkward when I discovered that the cakes I had 
bought tasted like wrapping paper. Mais: Qu'est 
ce qu'on veut? — c'est la guerre. 

Frau Plotow took me to her Jcinderhort, or rather 
her mddchenhort, as it is only for girls. This one, 
like most of the kinderhort, is in a school building. 
Working mothers leave their children for the day, 
paying a small sum, or nothing, to have their little 
girls fed, exercised, taught, and disciplined. This 
mddchenhort is one of a series of twenty-five run 
by private individuals. The city gives them the 
schoolrooms; the teachers pay for their light and heat; 
the food and other expenses are private. In peace 
time, children come to the mddchenhort after school 
hours and stay until six or six-thirty. Owing to the 
fact that many school buildings are now turned into 
barracks, the other schools must run two sets of 



66 An Uncensored Diary 

children, one in the morning and one in the after- 
noon, so the kindergartens also have two sessions. 
There are many societies which support Mnderhorts. 
The number of children left dai^y in all the Mnder- 
horts is more than double what it was in peace time. 

An institution that appeals to me, particularly, in 
the German schools is the row of shower-baths in the 
cellar, where every child gets a thorough scrubbing 
once a week, head and all, with tooth-brushes hang- 
ing in neat rows on the wall, to be used daily under 
the eagle eye of the superintendent. When children 
get to America, I suppose they feel it is an infringe- 
ment of their inalienable right to be dirty, if any 
one suggests soap to them. 

The school yard is treeless and grassless, so the 
girls of the mddchenhort society are marched out to 
gardens to play. They dance and sing and play 
delightful games, but they are all so good I don't 
see how they can really enjoy themselves. The 
bows and curtsies one gets are in strong contrast 
to the insults hurled at one by American public- 
school children. A German child does not seem 
to know what being really "fresh," and glorying in 
the act, means — which is one of the few blessings of 
German discipline. 



An Uncensored Diary 67 

The mddchenhort society also occupies itself, as 
does every third person in Berlin apparently, with 
sending children to holiday camps in the summer- 
time. 

June 22d. 

It is rather hard for me to find out how the war is 
taught in the schools, as I don't speak German, but 
as far as I can tell, it varies in different schools. 
They are not allowed to speak of peace, but the 
teachers read the newspapers to the pupils. Of 
course what they read depends on the newspapers 
they take. In only one school I know of do the chil- 
dren go through a short hate ceremony. When the 
teacher says: ^^Gott strafe England,^' the pupils an- 
swer: "Goii strafe es." They are still taught English 
and French but they are not allowed to use a word 
of either language outside of their lesson. 

Baron von Mumm has asked us to dinner, through 
his secretary, through a stenographer with the me- 
dium of a typewriter. I call that using the third 
person with a vengeance. Since everyone is so 
formal here, we thought we might as well do as the 
Romans do, and be slightly annoyed instead of 
amused, so we didn't answer. His secretary called 
up to know if we were coming, and Billy asked him 



68 An Uncensored Diary 

what Frieherr von Mumm meant by asking us in that 
manner. The secretary said: "Excellenz never sent 
out his own invitations in war time." We forgave 
him as grandly as possible and consented to go — 
as if we'd miss the chance of getting an extra 
dinner with meat; I'd go even if I were ordered 
to. 

June S6th. 

The Mexican situation is growing very serious. 
I do not relish the thought of having my brothers go 
out to fight those treacherous half-breeds, but I am 
now afraid I shall see them do it. 

We dined with the Winslows last night. A German 
officer there, Lieutenant Merton by name, declared 
it would take 500,000 men to quiet the Mexicans, 
and a million and a half men to conquer the country. 
Unlike most Germans, he thinks we would be most 
unwise to keep it. He said that we would have 
to keep an enormous police force there, since we were 
so cordially hated that revolutions would be inces- 
sant. I said it would be almost as much trouble as 
India to the British, and he said: "Certainly, as 
the Mexicans are a filthy lot." 

Lieutenant Merton had just come from Bel- 



An Uncensored Diary 69 

gium, where he was one of Von Bissing's aides-de- 
camp. He said the General quite considered him- 
self King of Belgium for the time being — which 
he virtually is — and lived and acted as such. 
Merton says Von Bissing sympathizes so greatly 
with the conquered country that he is doing every- 
thing possible to help it along and, he laughingly 
added, that he believed the General was so jealous 
for its welfare that he would even defend it against 
Germany. The Lieutenant told us that many Ger- 
mans were greatly shocked by the levity of the Bel- 
gians. They think that printing such post-cards as: 
" Qui est le vainqueur ? L' amour, "^ most unseemly 
on the part of a conquered people. 

Merton speaking about coming back to civilization 
from six months in the trenches : he said an automo- 
bile made him so nervous he couldn't stand it, and that 
a tramcar crossing the street at the same time he did 
was too terrifying a thing to be borne, while as for 
eating at a table with the proper implements and in 
civilized company, that was much worse than six 
months' shell fire. He dined with Von Bissing his 
first night back from the front, and he declared he 
was so shy and clumsy that the old gentleman kept 
patting his knee and telling him: "Never mind, my 



70 An Uncensored Diary 

boy, they are all like this when they come from the 
firing-line, paralyzed with fright at the sight of glass 
and china." 

We went to our Consul-General's, Mr. Lay's, after 
dinner, to dance. Most of the Embassy were there, 
and several Germans, but they would play cards in- 
stead of dancing. Of course it was rather hot, as 
we had to keep the blinds shut for fear of the police 
catching us dancing in war time. 

June 27th. 
Yesterday was a strenuous day — too strenuous in 
fact. I got to the Central Labour Exchange at nine 
o'clock in order to go through the workshops. They 
have taught 10,000 women to make soldiers' supplies 
here. There are about 200 women who sew in the 
building and some 4,000 who get work from the Ex- 
change and take it home. The wages are paid ac- 
cording to piecework but none are allowed to make 
more than fifteen marks a week. This is because the 
demand for work from the Exchange workshops is so 
great and because they wish to make this work only 
a temporary thing, to teach the women and to tide 
them over until another job can be found for them. 
These workshops have filled 7,000,000 marks' worth 



An Uncensored Diary 71 

of contracts since the war; they were almost entirely 
orders from the military, for helmet caps, cartridge 
cases, and sand bags. The Exchange has one or two 
men in its employ, and it was rather interesting to 
me to see that, while the women could cut out only 
ten patterns at a time, the men, using a sharp knife, 
could cut out forty. The shops pay all their expenses 
and even make money. They are anxious to make 
this a centre for giving out home work after the war, 
and the money earned will be devoted to doing this. 
Every employee is of course insured. Accident 
insurance is paid half by employer and half by 
employee; accidents, two thirds by the worker and 
one third by the employer : the State pays the doctor, 
medicine, and hospital bills when the insurance is 
needed. 

In 1915, the Central Labour Exchange of Berlin 
found work for 95,953 women, while all the Ex- 
changes secured jobs for 738,138 women. The 
women's divisions are always run by women in every 
Exchange in Germany. 

Saw the Oscar-Helene Heimy a hospital for crippled 
children, in the afternoon. It was a horrid effort 
to get there. First, a long, hot trip in the subway — 
abomination of desolation — and then a scorching 



72 An Uncensored Diary 

walk through a shadeless sandy wheat-field to the 
great home among the pine trees. Naturally, the 
Germans, being Germans, would build a thing like 
this in the country, instead of planting it in the city, 
in our usual happy manner. They are too sensible 
by half, these people. 

The children lie in beds out under the trees, or 
in the sun. When they can walk, they play in 
sand-pits or use the swings in the garden. A dozen 
or so two- and three-year-olds were rolling in the 
sand pit in abbreviated one-piece bathing suits, 
and browning their little twisted limbs in the healing 
sunshine. When they grow older, they have school, 
half an hour at a time, and then play. The Director 
said his children, crippled and sick though they were, 
learnt faster than other children because he mixes 
play so generously with study. 

There are some eighty soldiers recovering here, 
who lack limbs. These men are taught trades, and 
when they leave, are able to earn the wages of any 
tailor, blacksmith, basket-weaver or wood-carver in 
the land. It is really most surprising to see the dex- 
terous way in which the men work. Most of the 
soldiers are rather lazy and Wurtz said they were a 
bad influence; for my part, I was glad to hear that 



An Uncensored Diary 73 

someone at least did not make the most of every 
moment. 

In the halls and children's rooms are many 
bright pictures of fairy tales and animals, and for- 
eign lands, and for the men, pictures of all the great 
cripples who have ever lived. For Wurtz, the Herr 
Director, told us it was very good for the men to hear 
about what others like themselves had been able 
to accomplish. Wurtz seemed to me one of the 
kindest men I ever met. The children flock after 
him and call him "Papa." They clung about my 
skirts and said "Mama, Mama, show us thy little 
watch." 

After this, I went to Baroness von Bissing's to tea. 
Oh, welcome was the hour and her comfortable chair! 
She is small, with finely chiselled features; her move- 
ments are quick, like those of a highly bred animal, 
and she is rather excitable. 

We sat down to tea and cherry tarts and I asked 
her when she was next going to Belgium. She can, 
of course, go whenever she likes, but is never there 
officially, as no German officer may take his wife to 
Belgium. The General, being so strict a gentleman, 
will not break the rule even for himself, and so 
Baroness von Bissing and her children must live 



74 An Uncensored Diary 

alone in Germany, and he with his 150 aides-de-camp 
in his palace in Brussels. 

"It is very hard to be without my husband and my 
eldest son," she said. 

" Where is your boy.'* " I asked. 

"He was taken prisoner by the French, wounded in 
six places. When he got well, they took him to 
prison and put him in solitary confinement in a little 
tiny cell with no work to do and no one with whom he 
can speak. He may not even look out of the cell 
window, for they painted it white. Twice a day he 
is taken for a walk by his guards — and this all be- 
cause the French thought we did not treat Delcasse's 
son properly. Now, because they took my boy, and 
another, we have put six of their men in solitary con- 
finement. We will see where these reprisals will 
bring us; I am sorry they must be, but we have more 
captured men than they. 

"Why did they put Delcasse's son in prison in the 
first place.?* " I asked. 

"Because he was an impertinent boy and called his 
oflBcers 'dirty dogs of Prussians,' " she answered. 

I can imagine that, properly and fluently to insult 
one's captors, might almost be worth the price. 

"I fear for my son's mind," she said. "Soli- 



An Uncensored Diary 75 

tary confinement has such terrible effects some- 
times." 

This, alas, is too true. My German teacher's 
friend found her brother in a Russian prison, quite 
mad from two years' solitude. 

The conversation turned to Essen and the Krupps. 
Baroness von Bissing said she and her husband 
were going next week to Bertha Krupp von Bohlen's 
latest baby's christening — the General is to be god- 
father. 

"I like to go to Essen," continued she, "because 
cannon and such things interest me." 

I questioned her more and she told me she used to 
invent cannon and that she had several times tried 
to get patents for these remarkable works of her im- 
agination. 

"But did you know anything about such things.'*" 
I asked. 

"No," she said; "but I had the intention to turn 
a cannon into an automobile, or an automobile into 
a cannon, as I thought it would be very convenient 
in war." 

I agreed that it might, indeed, and laughingly 
told her she looked less like an inventor of cannon 
than almost any one I could think of. 



76 An Uncensored Diary 

"I told old Herr Krupp about my cannon," she 
went on, "one time when I was visiting there, and 
he asked me if I would like to see the ones he was 
making. I said that, as I knew he would not even 
let the Royal Princesses into that shop, I should 
be quite contented to see the rest of the works. But 
not at all; the old gentleman took me in and I was 
the first woman to see his cannon being made." 

We skipped from topic to topic as lightly as ga- 
zelles. From Essen we jumped to the Allies' note 
to Greece. We both agreed it quite outdid Austria's. 
I asked her if Germany had seen that note, and 
she said she didn't know, and she wanted to know 
what difference it would make anyway if Germany 
had. 

"What would Wilson, that dear man Wilson, have 
done if his son had gone into Mexico and been mur- 
dered by some villainous person there .^^ Wouldn't 
he have said something severe to them?" 

I thought it rather an appropriate simile. 

The Germans apparently hate Wilson and Roose- 
velt equally — the one for what they say are his pro- 
Ally tendencies, and the other for having turned 
against his former friends and insulted them, after 
accepting their hospitality. 



An Uncensored Diary 77 

"Serbia and Montenegro are full of people that 
need to be punished, but Italy — Italy!" — said Frau 
von Bissing, with her pretty nose in the air — "is a 
nasty little dog that has done something dirty and 
must be kicked out!" She emphasizes her words so 
heatedly when in earnest, that I never can help 
laughing. 

"Now tell me about your work, Baroness," I said. 
She modestly answered she did not do much but 
supplement the work of other people — which isn't 
true at all. 

The organization which Baroness von Bissing started 
is somewhat on the line of the work of the Nationaler 
Frauendienst, only the Von Bissing affair, instead 
of working for all the soldiers' families, concentrates 
on the wounded and their dependents. She noticed, 
while working in the hospitals, that the soldiers were 
often in need of advice and that they seemed to want 
someone to whom they could talk about their wor- 
ries. Cause enough there is for any German to 
worry when he thinks of the domestic wife or sweet- 
heart he left behind him, driving a great dray 
about the city streets, or jumping about in her dark- 
blue bloomers in a subway train, taking gentlemen's 
tickets. 



78 An Uncensored Diary 

"We are afraid our women will grow too fond of 
their new life and not want to stay at home and have 
families," said the Baroness. "We must make de- 
pendence sweet to them again." Of course, I took 
intense joy in this last statement. I asked if they 
had any idea of polygamy after the war, and she said 
"No"; that Germany was too religious a State for 
that — the Church parties were too strong to allow 
it. 

"We shall have to do everything by education. 
We have no other means. One of our tasks now in 
my work is to have our women and girls talked to, 
and to make them understand that they will not 
have crippled chil-dren if their husband or lover 
comes back from the war lacking an arm or a 
leg." 

"How about illegitimacy .f* Will you sanction 
that.?" I asked. 

"No," she said. "We could not do that either, or 
we would destroy the moral foundations of our 
country, but we are at this moment trying to get 
a bill through, which will make it easier for the 
mothers of illegitimate children, and harder for the 
fathers. 

"I wish to have sex hygiene taught in the schools. 



An XJncensored Diary 79 

but that will take some time, as the teachers must 
first be taught," she said. 

I do not doubt that Germany will, as the Baronin 
says, be able, through education, to work quite as 
effectively toward the repopulation of her country as 
she worked through polygamy after the Thirty Years' 
War. 

"We wish very much to make our men religious 
again; they seem to have lost this in their trench 
life," she said, sadly. "So the clergymen in Ger- 
many are working with our organization." 

We turned back to the invasion of Belgium. 
f "England is a disgusting hypocrite," said my hos- 
tess emphatically. "France is not so bad; we do not 
hate her, but England is in this war solely for 
money. It is a pleasant little joke of theirs, about 
our invading Belgium first, but I know that the Eng- 
lish and French were there before us." 
z' Now, if the wife of the Governor of Belgium believes 
this so earnestly, one may imagine how firmly the rest 
of Germany believes it. 

"I have seen in Antwerp," the lady went on, "a 
great house, seven stories high, which was so filled 
with English hospital supplies that we have not used 
them all up yet." 



80 An Uncensored Diary 

" The war, as we hear it from the German side," I 
said, "is not the same war at all. It is quite another. 
When accounts conflict so radically, what is a poor, 
bewildered American to do.'^" 

"When you are prone to judge us harshly, remem- 
ber we have had the English censor to deal with for 
two years, and that there are seventy-five corres- 
pondents in the Allied countries to twelve for the 
Central Powers. Add to this the facts that England 
controls the cable service of the world and shows an 
insatiable curiosity concerning other people's mail." 

I left soon after this, taking with me voluminous 
pamphlets on her work. There is no lack of literature 
and reports on things in Germany. I am sure, if I 
lived here long, I should get the pamphlet habit. One 
might write on the ancient cab horses here and what 
they are capable of on two fistsful of chopped straw 
a day, or on the evil effect on one's temper of riding in 
a flat-tired taxicab; I don't think any one has written 
up these yet. 

June 25th. 

Went to the Pestalozzi-Froebel House. I'd shied 
off for a long while on account of its name; I thought 
it would surely be dreadful. It's not, except that 
it's even more exemplary than their other institu- 



An Uncensored Diary 81 

tions. It's a combination kindergarten and school 
for children up to about fourteen, and a teachers' 
training school. I never saw anything like it ! Poor 
children may get taken care of and Montessoried for 
nothing, just as carefully as if they lived on Fifth 
Avenue. If need be, they may even spend the night 
there, which many of the very little ones do. Count- 
ing the girls who are in training, the teaching force is 
brought up to eighty for about two hundred and 
twenty children. There is apparently nothing, from 
cleaning windows to nursing children, the teachers do 
not learn. They live in the building until they are 
qualified to go out to another school and take charge. 
The children adore it. They have gardens and 
pet animals and are taught everything in such a de- 
lightful way. It is quite like the Jugendheim in 
Charlottenburg, which I described before, only on a 
larger scale. The numbers of children have, of course, 
greatly increased since the war. The matron told 
me that there were enough such places in Berlin to 
accommodate any child whose mother wished it to go. 
They are not all quite like the Pestalozzi-Froebel 
House certainly, but on that order. I should imagine 
that the refining influence of such schools must, and 
cannot but be, great, there is so much individual at- 



82 An Uncensored Diary 

tention given and such stress laid on daintiness and 
cleanliness and politeness. 

July 1st. 

Went to the Von G winners' to lunch. It was Von 
Gwinner who put through the Bagdad Railway 
scheme. The house is large, but there is a life-size 
marble statue of a woman playing a violin in the 
drawing-room. He has a beautiful garden. 

Von Gwinner said the victor in this war would be 
the nation which declared bankruptcy two weeks after 
all the rest. He expects they will all be taxed to the 
verge of poverty when the war is over, but believes 
Germany can hold out the longest. The eldest Miss 
von Gwinner is a delightful girl and one of the best 
informed and most intelligent women I've met here. 

Dined with Baron von Mumm Tuesday night at the 
Automobile Club. He is a fraud, and Count Montjelas 
with him, and I hope to see them both soon to tell 
them so. There was a crowd in the Leipziger Platz 
when I got there, and the two men were standing at 
the window. I asked what it was and they said: 
"Nothing, nothing, only the usual people going 
home from work." Now, whether they knew or not, 
I am not sure, but it really was the Socialists pub- 
licly demonstrating their disapproval of the im- 



An Uncensored Diary 83 

prisonment of Liebknecht for two years and a half. 
That shows what a Berlin riot is. I looked on and 
never knew it! 

We've heard from Freiherr von B that there 

was a really recognizable one in Diisseldorf , All the 
women went to the City Hall and demanded more 
meat and potatoes. The Mayor stuck his shaved head 
out of the window and tried to calm them with tales 
of beans and peas, but they shouted they did not 
want them, they wanted potatoes and, when he said 
he hadn't any, they smashed all the windows that 
couldn't resist brick. 

"That's just like the poor," said Von B , "they 

won't eat anything except potatoes." 

Dined with the Bocklins last night. Baron Bocklin 
is back for a few days from headquarters on the west- 
ern front. He says that Verdun will fall in about two 
weeks. What a 14th of July for the French! We 
asked the same eternal questions about the duration 
of the war. 

"The English and ourselves have just reached our 
maximum strength," he said. "The others have all 
passed it." 

Of course, I hate to dispute with Von Falkenhayn 
and Bocklin, but I do not think the English have 



84 An Uncensored Diary 

reached their maximum strength. Baron Bocklin 
thinks they will be able to secure strategic frontiers on 
the west, and Kurland on the east. Apparently 
the Baltic Provinces, up to the Peipus Lake, are 
waiting with longing to be under German dominion. 
Only 10 per cent, of the population is German. 
"Ah, but that is the educated percentage, you 
know." 

Yes, I do know, and I wonder how Russia will like 
having a German Gibraltar on the Baltic, and 
whether she will enjoy moving her capital to Moscow, " 
which would be the inevitable outcome of having the 
Germans so near Petrograd. 

Baron Bocklin showed us pictures he'd taken on the 
front. In one little house in Belgium, which he'd 
made his headquarters, a woman sneaked in on him 
one night when he was sleeping. He heard her and, 
jumping up, caught her by the throat. She had a 
long knife in her hand. As Bocklin was taking it from 
her, a man crawled out from under his bed with a 
gun, but was covered by the sergeant who came to 
Bocklin's rescue. The Baron let both assassins go, in- 
stead of having them shot as he had the right to do. 
Bocklin's mother was an American, and his grand- 
mother an Englishwoman. 



An Uncensored Diary 85 

Heard a delightful story about Mr, Gerard from 

Mrs. . She said that to tease Countess 

B he asked her why she hadn't married 

some nice stockbroker in New York, who could have 
provided her with much better-looking clothes, and 

more of them, than Count B . She went home 

in a rage and told the Count, who also became furi- 
ous and they both told all Berlin that Mr. Gerard 
was so anti-German that he disapproved of German- 
American marriages. Mrs. Gerard implores her 
husband to save his jokes for those who have a sense 
of humour but he says, no matter what resolutions he 

makes. Countess B is more than he can resist, 

and his remarks grow always worse instead of better. 

July 6th. 
Just back from three days in Hamburg. We went 
there with the dreariest possible recollections of the 
place — rain, cold, no food, and no people. This time, 
fortified with letters of introduction brought us by 
that most amiable of women. Countess Gotzen, we 
met with kindness and the fatted calf. Our rooms 
looked over the water where were sail-boats and white 
swans, and many willow trees and roses on the banks 
of the lake, and from behind the end of the harbour. 



86 An Uncensored Diary 

a great gray Zeppelin swam toward us and around 
and around in the still morning. 

The waiter who brought our breakfast wore the 
iron cross. I am sure he deserved it, for he was both 
frozen and shot to pieces in Russia. 

"For what," I asked him, "are those two small pills 
in that dish.?" 

"Saccharin, gnddige frau,^^ said he. 

I did not know it was so horrid sweet, and ruined 
my coffee. 

That night we went to the Max Warburgs' to dine. 
They are very delightful people; their house is large 
and nice, their sense of humour a joy to find, and be- 
sides that, Mrs. Warburg was well dressed and wore 
— oh, wonder of wonders in a German woman — silk 
stockings. Mr. Warburg is one of the biggest bank- 
ers of Germany, and is certainly the nicest. He de- 
clared American business men and American finan- 
ciers to be the most charming and the most unin- 
formed men in the world. 

"They know nothing of international affairs, not 
one thing," said he. "And they do not even know 
their own country thoroughly. We wonder over 
here how they can possibly get along with such little 
knowledge of the affairs of the world." He said he 



An Uncensored Diary 87 

told his brother, Mr. Paul Warburg, that it's easy 
enough for him to be a big man in America, where 
there is so little competition, but just let him come 
to Germany and try it. One may think America 
is work-mad, but it seems a shiftless, lazy place after 
Germany. 

Mr. Warburg says he does not see the end of the 
war but believes firmly that Germany will not be 
beaten. The harvest, which everyone had been say- 
ing would be so marvellous, he says will be good but 
not first class, and if the sun does not soon shine, it 
will not even be good. Well, harvest or no harvest, 
we were given a most royal dinner — roast beef, our 
first in Germany, and many courses. We even had 
nectarines from their hot-house in the country, and the 
most glorious big strawberries with plenty of sugar. 

I think the Germans are amazingly broad-minded. 
They think we are their enemies, and yet they are 
polite to us — frontier officials and petty oflScials al- 
ways excepted — and it's not politics either with the 
private individuals. 

The next morning, Mrs. Aufschlager sent her car- 
riage for me. She is the wife of the man who sup- 
plies most of Germany's powder, but she has only one 
pair of horses and an ancient coachman left her now. 



88 An Uncensored Diary 

"And before," she said, "I used to tire out two pairs 
of horses and my chauffeur every day." 

I can well believe it, for two mornings with her 
left me panting for breath; and she is no longer 
young. We went everywhere. The women in Ham- 
burg are almost surpassing the women in Berlin in the 
amount of relief work they do. They have Frauen- 
vereine and kriegshilfe, and hriegskilchen and Kinder- 
fiirsorge, and Red Cross organizations as thick as 
grass all over the city. It's no use describing what 
each does; suffice it to say that the kitchens feed 
about one fifth of the population each day — in the 
schools, in restaurants, or if the women wish to fetch 
their food, in the homes. The price for a huge bowl 
of food is 30 pfennigs, or even 20 pfennigs. If they 
are too poor, they get it for nothing. More and more 
kitchens are started each day. Some people want 
home cooking to be forbidden entirely until after the 
war. The kitchens will all stop then and home cook- 
ing be encouraged as much as possible. Of course, 
many of the school children will still get their 
lunches, as they have for years, and there will be 
cheap restaurants, but everywhere they say they do 
not want to have central cooking a permanent in- 
stitution. 



An Uncensored Diary 89 

There is one thing in Hamburg which they have not 
in BerHn. This is the systematic collecting and mak- 
ing over of old clothes. I have not seen anything 
which has made me feel more the pressingly economical 
rSgime under which the people are living than the large 
building given up to the regeneration of old clothes. 
Except for the horses which pull the vans full of cast- 
off wearing apparel up to the store-room door, all the 
brain work and hand work is done by women. First, 
everything is fumigated, then sorted, pressed, ripped 
up, washed, ironed, or dyed; men's trousers made into 
little girls' skirts, children's coats, boys' clothes. Old 
things are renovated, if not entirely transformed, and 
out of the left-over pieces are made patch quilts for 
the soldiers. Woollen things are treasured, an old 
glove, or cap, or shawl may be torn to pieces and 
woven anew. The ingenuity with which every rag 
is used is astonishing. I thought of my dear mother 
and wished she might be there to see, only I knew she 
would then be more convinced than ever that I was a 
wasteful, extravagant girl. The girls who do the 
work are paid, but the ladies in charge give their 
services free to the Hamburg Kriegshilfe. 

When the clothes are old no more, but quite new 
and resplendent, they are sent to another large build- 



90 An Uncensored Diary 

ing, also rent free, where they are given away. This 
is the central and largest of sixty-five workshops run 
by the Jcriegshilfe. New clothes are made here, and 
military supplies. In the sand-bag department I saw 
piles and piles of bags made out of some Canton 
flannel stuff, brightly patterned. 

"Why do you use this nice goods instead of sack- 
cloth.^" I asked. 

"Oh," said the ladies, "we had quantities of that 
brought in from Poland." 

"Stolen!" I cried. 

"No! " was the horrified chorus. "It is booty." 

Now the difference was a fine distinction I suppose 
I should have been able to make, but I did not think I 
would dispute it, so left them still animatedly dis- 
cussing the Amerikanerin who did not know mo- 
rality from what she called "swiping." 

The army supplies are paid for but all the rest is 
given away, and not a pfennig to pay. Thirty thou- 
sand families get their clothes here for nothing ! There 
are the usual investigations made first, so that people 
may not get more than they need. Before a woman's 
baby is born, she is given the proper outfit for it: al- 
together, it seemed to me, that it was better to be 
poor in Hamburg than proud somewhere else. 



An Uncensored Diary 91 

We drove to the station where the trains of wounded 
come in and saw them making ready with food 
and stretchers and flowers and a band of music to re- 
ceive some men from Russia. These exchange 
wounded do not look so badly as the men straight 
from the front, as clean clothes are given them at the 
frontier. We went, too, to the shipyards in the free 
port. One drives through a white-tiled tunnel under 
the river to get there and Frau Aufschlager was much 
amused at me for taking such an interest in it. 
Evidently she thought we had tunnels under every 
brook in America. The shipyards are busy but the 
great storehouses in the port show no sign of life at all. 
Every barge and crane lies idle in the harbour, while 
the English battleships crouch at the German gate. 

Went to the Warburgs' to tea and saw their de- 
lightful children. Mr. Warburg, they say, is the real 
brains of the Hamburg-American Line, and not 
Ballin. Billy was talking to Ballin to-day. The 
interview would be rather sensational if printed in our 
papers, but would give, I think, a false impression of 
Germany. For instance, he said Germany must have 
either the largest fleet in the world, or Antwerp and 
Calais. He believes in no treaties and has no hope of 
peace being made soon. 



92 An Uncensored Diary 

Dined at a restaurant up the lake with Mr. Mor- 
gan, our Consul-General. Mr. Reidemann, head of 
the Standard Oil in Germany, was there, and his 
American sister-in-law; also Count Quadt, the Prus- 
sian Minister. We got to talking American politics, 
and the Germans to coinmenting on the deplorable 
ignorance of our representatives and congressmen. 
"Yes, indeed," Mr. Morgan said. "Do you know 
what happened when one of our congressmen pro- 
posed to import twenty-five gondolas to put on the 
river in Washington.? Another congressman, who 
was of an economical turn of mind, got up and said: 
' Why not import a male and a female, and let nature 
do the rest? ' " Billy and I roared and the Germans 
were horrified that we could laugh at our Government 
so. Reidemann began wondering where all the swans 
in Hamburg had gone, in order to change the subject, 
and Mr. Morgan said they'd all been eaten and that it 
was an outrage as they were very rich, having been 
left a fortune for food by an old lady. Reidemann, 
thinking Morgan was quite serious about the eating, 
vehemently denied such cannibalism, and then won- 
dered why I laughed at him. 

"How's the Standard Oil, Mr. Reidemann?" I 
asked; "are you bankrupt yet?" 



An Uncensored Diary 93 

"Certainly not," said he. "Go home and relieve 
the minds of the company, and tell them I have not 
ruined them yet. We have immense wells in Ru- 
mania and get all the oil we want." 

"Then, why in the world are they using gasolene 
made out of coal?" said I. "Is it for the pleasure 
they take in this new discovery?" 

"They cannot afford the trains for transport," said 
Reidemann. This did not sound as if business was so 
very flourishing to me. I asked him if they would 
use the coal product after the war, and he said "No." 

When we were ready to go home, I stepped out on 
the balcony over the water. The canoes were thick 
below me, and I noticed one, paddled by a woman, 
which was being shoved about by all the others. It 
was the Fourth of July and I saw the canoe flew the 
American flag. Evidently the others were trying to 
make the girl take it down, and I could hear her 
angrily answering them back. Then one man came 
and, taking the flag-pole in his hand, broke it off. 
The girl quickly reached for his, and did the same, 
then both snatched their own back. The girl's 
canoe was still being shoved about and angry voices 
shouted at her. She held the flag in her hand till a 
man in a punt, with two other men, caught her flag 



94 An Uncensored Diary 

and, tearing it off, threw it in the water and spat on it. 
The girl, in a fury, struck him with the stick and he 
raised his canoe paddle to her. By this time, I, who 
am not an hysterical woman, was in such a rage and 
fury of patriotism, that there, before everyone, I 
stamped my feet and burst into angry tears. I was 
so angry I could not speak. Count Quadt and the 
Reidemanns had gone, but Billy and Mr. Morgan, who 
had come out on the balcony for the last scene, were 
swearing with rage. I went into the next room where 
there were no people, for I was terribly mortified 
with myself, but could not help the tears running 
down my face. The head waiter followed me and 
tried to console me. He did all but pat me on the 
back and call me a poor darling. 

"I am so sorry, madam," he said. "So very sorry. 
These Germans are rude men with no manners at all. 
I am a Hungarian and no one in my country would 
treat a woman so. I love America, and if I could get 
my passports, I would go back to-morrow!" 

If only one could have done something, but we 
were too far away, and the only Americans in the 
crowd. We would only have been arrested immedi- 
ately. The girl came in to the American Con- 
sulate in the morning. She was badly scratched 



An Uncensored Diary 95 

up and still so angry she cried while telling the 
Consul. Some of the women, she said, had cried 
"Shame!" to the men, and others had offered to see 
her home, but she said she wished no German near 
her. She said she had been to the police and given 
the numbers of the men's boats, and they promised 
her to punish the men, but advised her not to tell the 
Consul-General about the fuss. She answered that 
she was on her way to his office as fast as she could go. 
The Consul-General demanded an apology from the 
Burgomaster, and that the men be severely punished. 
The apology has been made. 

Went to Mrs. Reidemann's to tea, as we couldn't 
go to dinner. She is fattening two pigs in a pen 
by the front door and twenty convalescent soldiers in 
her ballroom, so I think she is doing her share for her 
adopted country. Her head huntsman had just been 
killed and her six gardeners are all in the war. Her 
orchid house is ruined from lack of care and she says 
the garden is hopeless. It was not too far gone, how- 
ever, to produce a huge bunch of pink roses for me, 
each one as big as a cabbage. The next day, when 
we came home to Berlin, they were too full blown to 
bring with me, but I did bring the pound of butter 
Mrs. Aufschlager gave me and the twenty-four lumps 



96 An Uncensored Diary 

of sugar, and a piece of cake Mr. Morgan sent wrap- 
ped up in a newspaper. The newspaper hurt Billy's 
feelings, but I would have that sugar. 

July 7ih. 
The Allied offensive seems very heavy. As Mr. 
Morgan said the other night: "The Germans are 
getting vicious; they got a crack in the eye in Austria, 
and another by the French on the west, and the 
English are biting their heels." The confidence and 
placidity of the people, as a whole, under this, the 
worst fighting of the whole war, are remarkable. All 
I have seen them do was to take it out on one lone 
woman in a canoe. 

July 11th. 
Lunched with Baron von Pritwitz, Baroness Bock- 
lin, Herr Horstmann, and another man from the 
Foreign Office. We were at Hillers, and the men felt 
rather fed up on war and politics — which they well 
may be considering that the rain is likely to ruin 
the harvest, and the Russians still seem as enthusi- 
astic as ever about taking prisoners, while the French 
and English manage to cause considerable annoyance 
— so, for these reasons, we carried on a conversation 



An Uncensored Diary 97 

one might have translated into any language with 
equal propriety. We decided that the Friedlanders, 
who own all the coal mines in Germany, must ask us 
all to the country in order that I may show them how 
to ride on a board behind a motor-boat. Billy and I 
don't know the Friedlanders, but apparently they 
won't notice that. 

Horstmann then said he'd heard I needed clothes 
and was going home unless I got some quickly, so he'd 
made engagements with three of the largest dress- 
makers in Berlin for me ! I was supposed to have a 
German lesson, but what was I to do.^^ They all four 
marched me down to Alfred Marie's and com- 
manded the models to stand forth. I can say I never 
expected, when I came to Germany a serious-minded 
woman seeking information on the "woman ques- 
tion," to go dress hunting with Von Jagow's secre- 
tary, and two more men from the Foreign Office. I 
had nothing to say about the clothes; Horstmann knew 
a great deal more about it than I, so I came away 
with a hat and a black-and-white dress chic enough to 
ruin my reputation in Berlin. 

I went to see Abraham's kitchens to-day. All the 
women there thought the dear man was too good to 
live much longer. He has twenty-nine mittlestands- 



98 An Uncensored Diary 

kuchen, which feed 36,000 people three plates twice a 
day for sixty pfennigs, soldiers fifty pfennigs; forty- 
four hinderhuchen which supply 24,000 children soup 
once a day, usually for nothing, the State oaying 
eighty-one pfennig; and he has thirty-five hinderhorts 
in schools or in his kitchens, which take care of 3,000 
children from three until six o'clock. The kinder- 
horts and the kinderkiiche he had before the war, but 
with far fewer children. Also he has one day nursery 
for babies, and I should say that is a rather good job 
for any gentleman. Abraham has no end of women 
under him. They do all the actual work. He is the 
head brains of the Kinder-Volkskiichen-Verein, and 
I think deserves immense credit for the work he does. 
Some of the kitchens pay for themselves, and the rest 
is given by charity. More kitchens are being opened 
by him daily. They scorn the gulash cannonen, which 
the city runs in some districts, but I imagine it is 
better to buy soup out of a pushcart than not to have 
anything but a piece of beastly war-bread. 

July 12ih. 
Went to see Dr. Gertrude Baumer this morning. 
She is, I suppose, better known than any other 
woman in Germany except the Kaiserin, or the 



An Uncensored Diary 99 

Crown Princess. I asked her every question it was 
possible for me to think of, and she answered in 
nervous, broken Enghsh. They do not know how 
many new industries women have entered since the war 
began, nor can they tell how many more women are 
working now than before. The social insurance 
statistics give an approximate idea, but naturally the 
number changes from day to day as the field of their 
work enlarges. There are great numbers in the 
metal industries doing half-skilled work, and also 
women doing the skilled work. They manage the 
travelling cranes in iron and steel foundries, a thing 
no employer believed was possible. They do what is 
called "electro-technical" work, and the employers 
have discovered through this that unskilled labour 
(if intelligent) may be trained to new work with great 
rapidity. For instance, in the Algemene-Eledrici- 
tdts Gesellschaft there are 17,000 men and 17,000 
women all doing the same work. Women work at 
mining also, but only in the open mines. They are 
not allowed underground. They dig the coal and also 
load the cars. In the iron foundries they do not 
work directly at the blast furnaces, but near them. 
Apparently, they are unable to stand the heat. As 
yet, the women seem to have suffered no ill effects 



100 An Uncensored Diary 

from their work in the iron industries, the mines, and 
the munition factories, but undoubtedly they will 
if permitted to work long at these trades. The em- 
ployers find them intelligent, but far more nervous 
than men. Noise and heat they are particularly 
unable to stand, and of course the lifting of heavy 
weights such as they must handle in the munition 
factories is injurious. The employers declare they 
wish to keep women in the industries which they have 
entered, and it will be quite a fight to prevent their 
going on working in many of them. There were a 
number of industries in which women were forbidden 
to work before the war, but since 1914 they have come 
into many which no one had ever thought of putting 
a ban upon, as it had occurred to no one that a woman 
was ever likely to enter upon such a career. I must 
confess I never expected to see a woman sitting in a 
glass cage and managing an electric crane, which 
swung buckets of molten metal, or red-hot blocks of 
iron and steel through the air. 

Now that all bans are off, and women may work a 
twelve-hour day and overtime, and at night on an 
eight-hour shift, and in industries where before they 
were forbidden by law or custom, they are feeling very 
emancipated, but after the war, those enlightened 



An Uncensored Diary 101 

beings, who try to care for the health of women, will 
endeavour to get laws passed forbidding their working 
at mining, or munition making, or in foundries. 
Night work will be forbidden, and the ten-hour day 
reestablished. There is little hope of an eight-hour 
day for women for a long while yet. 

It is hard to compare women's wages to-day with 
men's wages before the war, as many women are doing 
work which no one ever did before. One cannot say 
they get the same wages as men. When they step 
into a man's job, they get his wages unless they work 
fewer hours than he did. For piece-work, they are 
paid at the same rate as the men were, but do less 
work than the men did. At much of the work, the 
women are new and make mistakes, so the employer 
does not pay them so highly as he would a man. The 
employers say that, although they are pleased with 
the female labour, and wish to keep the women after 
the war, their profits are not quite so high as with 
male employees. 

The machinery in the factories is not being changed 
for the women; they work with the same tools as the 
men, A few more safety devices are put in, but all 
machinery was so excellently protected before the 
war, little extra was necessary. If the machinery 



102 An Uncensored Diary 

had been changed, there would be more likelihood of 
women holding their jobs after the war. 

Only from three to four per cent, of the women are 
unionized. Those who are, are nearly all in the men's 
trade unions. The only union which will not admit 
them is the lithographic union. In the other unions, 
the men work to help the women along in the wage 
question, the matter of hours, and so on. In this 
way, they succeed better than when they try to have 
their own unions. 

Dr. Baumer is very anxious to get half-day work 
for married women in factories after the war. They 
could then continue to earn a small but much-needed 
wage. 

Employers are not allowed to discharge women for 
child-bearing. They must give them two weeks' holi- 
day before the child's birth, and four weeks' after. 
During this period, they get two thirds of their wages 
from their sickness insurance. Also, they may get 
their doctor and medicines free. At present, soldiers' 
wives are getting 120 marks from the State for each 
baby, and half a mark a day extra if they nurse the 
child themselves. Dr. Baumer thinks it may be pos- 
sible to keep this system after the war for all families 
whose income is under 2,500 marks a year. 



An Uncensored Diary 103 

As for suffrage, Doctor Baumer said that all the 
Social Democrats and the Radical-Liberals are pro. 
They do not have regular suffrage organizations here, 
as in England and the United States, but they work 
for it through other organizations, such as the Na- 
tional Council of the Women of Germany, which has 
600,000 members, and of which Doctor Baumer is the 
head. The interest in suffrage is more a general polit- 
ical interest than a professional interest or desire for 
certain rights the women feel they do not have. They 
are anxious for a more direct hand in the governing 
of their country. Women sit on the school boards all 
over Germany. In Weimar they must sit on the 
boards for the care of the poor; in other provinces, 
they may sit on the Poor Law Board if they wish. 
They are also on the committees for hospitals, orphan- 
ages, institutions for the protection and care of chil- 
dren, the inspection of dwellings, theatres, libraries, 
and markets. They even sit on the social insurance 
boards, though it is rather difficult to elect them, as 
the German ballot can usually manage to dodge an 
unwelcome candidate. The last elections were very 
favourable to the women, however. 

A law has just been passed, admitting women as 
teachers in the boys' schools. In the mixed schools 



104 An Uncensored Diary 

they will have half women teachers, and half men; and 
in the girls' schools, two thirds of the teachers will be 
women. There are, with very few exceptions, no 
married women schoolmistresses; the rule is that there 
shall be none, but apparently this is one of the rare 
cases where a German rule may be stretched. The 
schools are under the jurisdiction of the different 
states, while the factories and industries are under 
the Empire. Thus, all the states may have different 
school laws, but laws governing labour, with work- 
men's compensation and insurance, are the same, and 
there is a ten-hour day all over Germany for women, 
instead of having eleven hours in Bavaria and eight 
in Mecklenburg. 

I asked if many girls were coming in from the coun- 
try to the cities to work, and Doctor Baumer said 
"yes." When I asked what they were trying to do to 
prevent this, she said that a better school system in 
the country would be the only thing. They are try- 
ing to have compulsory continuation schools which 
will keep the girls until the age of sixteen or eighteen, 
and teach them farming and cattle raising, and I sup- 
pose, cooking and sewing — ^for those evils are just as 
necessary in the country as in the city. 

When I wanted to know what they would do to 



An Uncensored Diary 105 

encourage the birth rate, she repeated what she had 
said about continuing the 120 mark pensions for the 
mothers. They also propose to give a proportionately 
larger salary to State officials with families. Since there 
are more State officials than there is population — as far 
as I can see — I should think this last might prove re- 
munerative in offspring. Every one hoots at the idea 
of polygamy, or soldiers getting leave, in order to go 
home and beget a family. The best answer to the 
leave question, they say, is the fact that many 
soldiers get no leave at all. The day they are about 
to start for home, an attack is made, and in the 
trenches the men must stay. Evidently, the question 
of what Germany is going to do to increase the birth 
rate is a far more exciting matter for speculation else- 
where than here. 

I asked if the women had become less conventional 
in their ideas about love and marriage since the war, 
and Doctor Baumer declared they were far more un- 
conventional. As I didn't have time to ask her more, 
or rather thought the poor woman had suffered 
enough from me, I left this topic in this vague state, 
and came home. 

Dined with the Von Kleists' — quite a large party. 
I sat between M. Roland, the Spanish secretary, and 



106 An Uncensored Diary 

Count Montjelas. The latter is exonerated from 
the charge I made against him the other day. He 
did not know there was a riot going on that night in 
front of the Automobile Club. He said, when he saw 
it in the papers, he knew I'd think he had lied, but he 
wished me to know he knew no more than I that 
night. 

July 13th. 

We went to the Kriegspresseamt to arrange about 
going to Belgium. I was dressed for a lunch party so 
didn't look much like a serious-minded journalist, but 
they will let me go with Billy. The first thing that the 
Herr Major did was to hand me a shell made by the 
Bethlehem Steel Co. I made a dreadful face, which 
might have meant either: "Why didn't the wretched 
thing explode," or: "What a wicked shame for 
Americans to have made it." 

"Don't blame me for that now/' I said. "I come 
from Bethlehem, but my father is only a harmless 
college president and not in the Steel Company." 

"Oh," cried Herr Griesel. "That grant unifersity 
Lehigh ! I haf a cousin wot is married mit a professor 
there. They haf sent me putiful bictures of Lehigh." 
So I was saved their scorn. 

We were introduced to an Excellenz Coates, who 



An Uncensored Diary 107 

will guide us through Belgium. He seemed very 
nice and had one blind eye, which I regretted for his 
sake but thought might be useful to us, as they say 
one is watched most vigilantly — not that I expect to 
do anything very devilish, but I do hate to be under 
supervision. 

Lunched at the Lays' . They had a party for Prince 
Christian of Hesse and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Roger's mother and father. The Bluchers were to have 
been there, but old Prince Bliicher chose this morning 
to drop dead off his horse. He must have been a charm- 
ing old man. Most of his life he spent trying to evade 
his German taxes. He had an island off the coast of 
England, on which he kept a great many kangaroos. 
Perhaps he thought they added a touch of British 
atmosphere to his estate. He wished to know if he 
couldn't come to America and live there about a week, 
in order to become an American citizen, as he found 
his island didn't get him out of paying his German 
taxes, but when told it would take even longer than a 
week to become an American citizen, he gave up that 
idea. He was much interested in America but said 
he thought it must be dangerous to have so many 
buffaloes around. And, when he heard of the lynch- 
ings our peace-loving citizens occasionally like to in- 



108 An Uncensored Diary 

dulge in, he suggested we let our wild Indians out to 
subdue the lynchers. "That would soon put a stop 
to such riots," said the old gentleman. 

July 17th. 

We have seen, in a French and a German paper, 

rumours of the purchase of the Danish West Indies 

by the United States. I am very much interested to 

know if Billy's account of transactions up to date got 

home. He had it straight from . Billy 

asked Ballin, when he saw him, if he had had any- 
thing to do with stopping the sale before, as was be- 
lieved by T. R. and Secretary Hay. Ballin said: 
"No," and that his belief was, that the wife of Prince 
Waldemar stopped it, being a loyal Danish woman 
and not wishing her country to lose any more of its 
territory. 

July 17th. 

Billy saw Rathenau, the most brilliant of Germany's 
industrial kings. He talked so frankly that I hesitate 
to write down his name. Billy first asked him when 
he thought the war would end. 

"At the earliest, in 1918," said Rathenau. "It 
might just as well end now, for Germany is ready 
now to make peace on the same terms that she will in 



An Uncensored Diary 109 

1918, but I think the English will have to become far 
more weary of the war than they are now before they 
will be ready to talk sensibly." 

Billy wanted to know what he believed the terms of 
peace would be. 

"In the end," Rathenau answered, "I think peace 
will be made on these terms: Germany will not keep 
an inch of French or Belgian soil. Talk of our keep- 
ing the Meuse forts and the crests of the Vosges 
Mountains is nonsense. We shall pay Belgium an 
indemnity of say two billion marks. We shall not 
call it an indemnity but we shall tie it up in the pur- 
chase price which we shall pay for a strip of Belgian 
Congo to connect our colonies in East and West Africa. 
The purchase price will be very much more than the 
land is worth. We shall not keep Kurland. The 
present agitation for its retention is sentimental 
idiocy. There are only 200,000 Germans there, the 
rest of the population is Lithuanian and Esth. 

"We shall not attempt to keep Poland, or to bring 
her into the German Zollverein. It will be better, 
both for Austria and ourselves, if Poland remains 
under Russian control, for the Poles are the most un- 
reliable people in Europe and they will always work 
against the power to which they are allied. If Russia 



110 An Uncensored Diary 

keeps them, she will continue to have a diflScuIt people 
on her hands, and Poland will turn to Austria and our- 
selves for support. 

"The question of Serbia is harder. Bulgaria will 
probably keep the part of Macedonia which she 
wants, and Austria will take some Serbian territory. 
Serbia will be compensated by the acquisition of 
Montenegro and an outlet to the sea in Albania. 

" One condition of the peace will have to be a return 
to the status quo before the war in an economic way. 
That is, the plans of the Paris Conference for an 
economic war must be abandoned." 

Billy suggested that it might be possible for the 
United States, England, and Germany to make an 
alliance on the basis that Germany must limit her 
fleet and leave England the supremacy of the sea. 
England must promise not to blockade Germany 
again. The United States is to guarantee the keeping 
of both agreements, in return getting the ratification 
of the Monroe Doctrine by England and Germany. 
The United States will guarantee the pledge of Eng- 
land by agreeing to put an embargo on exports to Eng- 
land if England breaks her promise. In the event of 
aggression on the part of Germany, the United States 
would come in on the side of England, or vice versa. 



An Uncensored Diary 111 

"That is perfectly possible," said Rathenau. 
"That is the peace Germany is ready to make to-day. 
England probably will not be ready for it until 1918. 
The great danger is that peace will be put off many 
years longer, perhaps till 1920. This danger springs 
from the even chance that Germany will recommence 
the U-boat war. I consider that absolutely unneces- 
sary. Moreover, it would make the war a horrible 
thing. It is already the most absurd, mad thing that 
has ever happened in the world. A recommence- 
ment of this U-boat war would bring in Rumania, the 
United States, Holland, Denmark, and Norway. It 
would make us the most hated people on earth and 
would prolong the war indefinitely. 

"There is an even chance the Tirpitz party will 
win out. The situation is this. Falkenhayn said to 
the Kaiser that he could crush the Russians, French, 
and English. Now the Kaiser sees that the battles 
on both fronts sweep first this way, then that way. 
Falkenhayn explains: "I would do it if the fleet gave 
me proper support." 

"Tirpitz said his fleet was to crush England. It 
has not, and his answer is that he is forbidden his 
most effective weapon, the submarine. 

"The people then ask : * Why must we go on having 



112 An Uncensored Diary 

less to eat and sacrificing our children?' and the Con- 
servatives answer them, that the Kaiser and Beth- 
mann-HoUweg are too weak to use our greatest 
weapon, the U-boat. 

"With the opening of the Reichstag in the autumn, 
the fight will begin again. I do not think the Con- 
servatives will win then, but early in the spring, after 
the people have suffered another winter, I fear 
that the submarine war party will be the stronger 
and the submarine war start again in the spring of 
1917. The Chancellor will then resign, and perhaps 
Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, or Mackensen will take his 
place. 

"The Emperor is on the fence. He favours first 
one party, then the other. The naval party will be 
strong next spring. We are finishing from four to 
five submarines a week, I know, as I make half the 
engines. They will then think the blockade may be 
made successful." 

Billy asked if there was a chance of Austria coming 
into a Zollverein. Rathenau said there was a 
splendid chance, a short while ago, but the matter 
was so bungled that they do not expect it now for 
twenty years. 

Rathenau organized German industry for war. 



An Uncensored Diary 113 

The one thing the German General Staff had neg- 
lected to do was to prepare Germany against such 
a blockade as the English are maintaining. Rathenau 
came to Von Falkenhayn three days after war was 
declared, with plans for an Industrial General 
Staff and for the conservation of raw materials. 
Falkenhayn immediately put the whole matter 
into Rathenau's hands. 

Rathenau then demanded of the statistical bureau 
that they find out what raw materials were in the 
country. The bureau answered that it would take 
six months. Rathenau replied that they must 
furnish the information in half as many weeks. 
They did ! This accomplished, the order was issued 
that manufacturers might use certain raw materials 
only for the production of articles to be used by 
the army. This obliged many manufacturers to 
cease turning out what they were in the habit of 
making, and to make quite a different thing. Thus 
the largest piano factory in Germany immediately 
took to making shells, and countless other fac- 
tories were forced to institute quite as radical a 
change. 

The last thing he said was, that Prince Biilow had 
no chance of again becoming Prime Minister. 



114 An Uncensored Diary 

July 18th. 

The rains continue. In some sections of the 
country the peasants are paddling around their po- 
tato fields in boats, trying to save a portion of their 
crops. Our maid said yesterday, in tones of utter 
despair, that if the war went on much longer, there 
would be no men left, and if the rain continued, there 
would be no food left. Her brother, who is a farmer, 
said one more week of rain and things would be very 
bad. 

Yesterday, when I was coming home, my tram was 
halted by a marching regiment. The band at its 
head was playing, each soldier wore a bunch of 
flowers in his belt, and by this token one knew they 
were bound for the front. Mixed in the ranks, and 
walking by the soldiers' sides, were many others. 
Young girls marching to the station with their 
brothers, sweethearts, or husbands; old men and 
women trudging by their sons until the last moment; 
little children holding their fathers' free hands, and 
wishing they might be big enough to carry the gun on 
his other shoulder. Four of the women in my tram 
began to sob. The men going out were not their men, 
or the women would have been there in the crowd 



An Uncensored Diary 115 

walking with them, but each of the women wore 
black. The men were not even of my people, but the 
hideous, tragic foolishness of the thing this swinging 
column symbolized, and the sorrow of the weeping 
women near me, brought the hot tears smarting to 
my eyes. 

Mrs. Gerard told me yesterday, when I was there 
at tea, that one woman whom she knew had lost her 
five sons, and then, poor soul, died of a broken heart. 
It seems to me the German people are about ready to 
stop the war. 

Lunched at HUlers with Herr Horstmann, the 
Duchesse d'Aremberg, and Count Pejacsevich. I be- 
lieve the d'Arembergs date their family from before 
Adam, some time. The Duchesse d' Aremberg was nSe 
Princess de Ligne and one would suppose, from the 
combination, she would be rather anti-German in her 
sentiments. The Due d' Aremberg, when the war 
broke out, held a commission in the German army, 
as his family is so international. Much to the dis- 
gust of the Belgians, who consider him a prince of 
their soil, d'Aremberg kept his commission, and 
marched with the invading army into his own country. 
Even the Germans thought he would ask for a post on 
the General Staff and, in this way, have an excuse not 



116 An Uncensored Diary 

actually to go to war. The Palais d'Aremberg, in 
Brussels, is now housing 200 wounded soldiers, whom 
the Duchesse told me to go and see. The Duke 
does not dare to show himself in Belgium, while the 
Duchesse only attempted to go back to her palace 
after a year and a half. All their superb art treasures 
they have taken from Brussels to their castle in 
Westphalia, so I shall, unfortunately, not see them. 
My lady herself is now d^un certain age, with dyed 
yellow hair and painted eyelashes. Her pearls are 
beautiful, her rings extraordinary, and she wore a 
light blue silk hat with velvet streamers. I arrived 
at the restaurant first. Then the men cried : " Here 
comes the Duchess!" and this vision appeared. Her 
voice, like that of all French women, was a delight, 
but she has not the fascination of some of her coun- 
trywomen. 

She gave me the address of some dressmakers, and 
a place where one may buy very delirious lingerie. 
The sample she showed me was a piece of Brussels 
point lace with a square of linen in the middle about a 
square inch in size. She called it a handkerchief and 
advised my buying some. I said the ones I used 
usually cost 12| cents and had my name written on 
them in ink — so she hates me. 



n 

BELGIUM 

Brussels, July 21sL 
Leaving Berlin on a night train is a hopeless nui- 
sance in war time. There are almost no cabs, so one 
must order one hours ahead and, if it comes, as ours 
did, one must go and sit an eternity in the railroad 
station. There we met Excellenz Coates waiting, as 
he was destined to do for the next week, for the Bul- 
htts to arrive. On Billy's attempting to tip the 
porter, Excellenz interrupted: "Excuse me," said he. 
"You are now the guests of the German Govern- 
ment," and the porter received a portion of his own 
good tax money back from the hands of its collector. 
I must say our surprise was great; we had not ex- 
pected this. When one travels as the guest of the 
government, things are luxurious and easy. One goes 
first class and one is treated with marked respect, par- 
ticularly if one has an Excellenz in imiform along; 
soldiers, who are everywhere, form into stiff lines of 
salute, and smile instead of scowl, I shall never cease 

117 



118 An Uncensored Diary 

to be amused at the way in wliich a man is trans- 
formed upon the approach of an officer into a rigid, 
staring object, ferocious of eye and terrifying of as- 
pect. I do not remember having seen American 
soldiers salute, but I am sure they are temperment- 
ally incapable of any such performance as the Ger- 
man soldier automatically undertakes on the average 
of thirty times a minute. 

After a night's journey, we got to Cologne. The 
station was swarming with men in feldgrau. Most of 
the uniforms were dirty and worn, and the men's 
boots were muddy up to their knees. They were eat- 
ing at tables on the platforms, or squatting on the floor 
by their kit; companies were getting into trains, or 
standing about the waiting rooms. They looked 
healthy and sunburned. Where they had come from, 
and where they were going, one did not know, for the 
German army moves secretly and ceaselessly. 

We saw the cathedral during our hour's wait. 
Soldiers were here, too, on their knees before some 
favourite saint, or stalking about with heads in the air 
looking at the great columns springing toward the 
roof. A severe gentleman in a red robe told us to 
sit down, and it delighted my soul to walk about with 
Coates and not do it. I have become so cowed during 



An Uncensored Diary 119 

my six weeks in Berlin that, if a German ragamuffin 
ordered me to move on, I should undoubtedly do it 
immediately. 

Shortly after leaving Cologne, we got into Belgian 
territory. From the border to close upon Louvain 
one could not tell from the train that Belgium had 
ever been invaded, were it not for the German sen- 
tries by the railroad track, and the soldiers in the rail- 
road stations. The country is covered with grain 
fields and vegetable gardens, all under strenuous cul- 
tivation. Many cattle are grazing and the villages 
look quite as in normal times. On approaching 
Louvain, one begins to see destroyed villages, burned 
chateaux, and half -demolished factories. Brussels it- 
self, which we reached at three in the afternoon, is not 
touched, as it was surrendered peacefully. Soldiers 
of the moth-eaten Landsturm class spread themselves 
pretty successfully over the city, beginning with the 
entrance to the railroad station. Before one enters a 
train, a soldier examines one's passport, and then an- 
other takes the tickets. Before one leaves the sta- 
tion, passports must be shown again. There is an 
exit from the stations for "Militdr personen" which 
we may go through when with Coates. I had be- 
come so courageous by the time we reached Brussels, 



120 An Uncensored Diary 

that I suggested our choosing the exit marked: ^'Kein 
Ausgang," as the fever to break rules was strong upon 
me, having been six weeks in Germany. This could 
not be managed, however. 

At the Hotel Astoria we were given a bedroom, 
sitting-room, and bath, accompanied by a Belgian 
valet, who showed signs of joy when he learned we 
were Americans. He confided to me that his little 
girl had been lost since the beginning of the war, and 
that he had spent all the money which he had saved up 
for his old age in travelling around trying to find her. 

"And after the war," he continued, sadly, "I 
shall have no money left to go to France and hunt 
for her there." 

The Belgians are now perfectly well behaved under 
German rule. Any sign of disrespect is fined heavily. 
Belgian policemen salute German officers, Belgian 
storekeepers and restaurants have Germans as 
constant customers, but all social communication is 
entirely cut off; the line is drawn here absolutely 
and finally. 

Americans are very popular. One has only to 
say, on entering a shop, that one comes from the 
U. S. A., and smiles greet one from behind counters 
like a sunrise. If we are with a German officer. 



An Uncensored Diary 121 

their attitude is quite different, polite, unsmiling, 
and cold, although the German officers treat them 
with perfect courtesy. Billy went into a little shop 
to buy chocolate the day we arrived. The Major 
and I stayed outside and looked in the window. 
The proprietress scowled, and handed over a cake 
of suchard. Suddenly her face was transformed. 
Billy had told her he was an American. 

*'0h, les Americains I" she cried, "we are so grate- 
ful for everything that you have done for us!" 

We went the afternoon of our arrival in Brussels to 
the press office, where we met Count Harrach and 
Baron Falkenhousen. Harrach is in charge of the 
press in Belgium. He is a man of the type it would 
be well to have many of in any country. We both 
like him immensely. By vocation, he is a sculptor, 
but he seems to have switched from marble busts to 
newspaper editing and press censoring with little 
trouble. 

We dined at the Epaule de Mouton: Coates, 
Harrach, Billy, and I. Harrach told us of the 
entrance of the German army into Malines. 

"I came in ahead in a military automobile," he 
said. "The town was deserted, and silent. Every 
citizen had fled. It was like some city in a fairy 



122 An Uncensored Diary 

tale. Shops open, wares displayed, homes looking 
quite normal, but not a soul anywhere. The silence 
was startling in its intensity. I drove straight to the 
church, where I knew there were two Rubens pic- 
tures. These I wished to take to some safe place, 
but they were gone; the Belgians had taken them out 
of their frames and hidden them or taken them with 
them in the flight. 

"In a bookshop I entered was a row of red morocco 
volumes, which I wished very much to take as 
souvenirs, but I did not, as I thought the example 
would be bad for my troops, who were forbidden to 
take a thing under the threat of a heavy punishment. 

"Malines was between the Belgian and German 
firing lines, so few shells fell on the town. We could 
hear them go whistling overhead with a long, sharp 
scream; shrapnel alone burst in white puffs above our 
heads and fell like hailstones in the streets. By 
keeping close to the walls, one was out of danger. 
But what I shall always carry vividly in mind was 
the fact that my chauffeur and I were the only souls 
in the large town of Malines until my troops came 
in a short while after." 

Since Harrach described the city, we have been there 
ourselves. Now the people have come back and life 



An U licensor ed Diary 123 

seems quite normal. There is very little destruction. 
An odd shell fell here and there and blew up the 
house in that spot. Across the Place from the 
cathedral, most of the destruction took place. Here, 
half a block is knocked to pieces. The windows of 
the cathedral are nearly all shattered as a result of 
the vibration. Some few shells came through the 
roof, or the walls, and the holes have since been filled 
up with brickwork. The main part of the building 
is not greatly damaged. It looks, however, a good 
deal pounded up, and artificially antiquated. 

We wished very much to see Cardinal Mercier, 
Archbishop of Malines, but were not allowed by the 
Major. Naturally, it would be rather contrary to 
German interests to have one of the most famous 
of Belgian patriots give us a few of his views on 
German occupation, so we understood perfectly 
their not wishing us to talk to him. The Germans 
told us quite frankly that they had not brought us 
here to talk to Belgians. 

We dined, the evening of our trip to Malines, with 
Harrach, Falkenhousen, Doctor Rieth, Count and 
Countess Mengerson, Baron von Lancken, and 
several other men in the house now occupied by these 
men of the "press." 



124 An Uncensored Diary 

We were given a most excellent dinner and 
enjoyed ourselves immensely. The food in Belgium 
is still good and apparently plentiful. It seems like 
a land of luxury and ease compared with Germany. 

I asked Count Mengerson to whom the house be- 
longed, and he told me to a Belgian who detested 
the Germans immeasurably. 

"We have made an inventory," said Von Lancken, 
"of everything in the house and shall replace any- 
thing which we break." 

The next day a government motor called for us 
to take us on a tour of Brussels, under the guidance 
of the agreeable young man named Rieth, who had 
been at dinner the night before. 

First, taking up what the Germans are doing 
for Belgium in the way of relieving the industrial 
situation, they showed us the Spitzen Centrale, 
or the central bureau for lace. The lace industry, 
in which fifty thousand Belgian women had been 
employed, was almost completely paralyzed by the 
outbreak of the war, all exports being stopped. 
Governor von Bissing is sincerely anxious that the 
Belgians be enabled to gain a livelihood and so, under 
the encouragement of the government, 10,000 
women have again taken up the work. At first, they 



An Uncensored Diary 125 

were so suspicious they would not be employed by the 
Germans, nor would they trust them to sell their lace. 
Their wages now amount to two marks fifty a day, 
slightly more than they earned at lace making before 
the war. There is also a blouse shop, which the 
Germans conduct. The work from the lace Cen- 
trale and from the blouse workshops is sold 
almost exclusively to Germans, as it is run by 
Germans. 

Then there are several cigar factories conducted 
by the government, and a large sack factory. This 
factory is a special pet of Von Bissing's. In the sack 
factory, 400 women are employed. They make mail 
sacks, and sand bags for the German army, 400,000 in 
all every day. Social insurance is carried on accord- 
ing to the German plans, and a day nursery is near by 
for the children of the workers — admirably run, as are 
all such German institutions. As we were watching 
the babies being fed by the nurses in charge, one of 
our officer guides said: 

"Yes, these are the German barbarians who eat 
little children." 

They refer very often, in a laughing way, to the 
reputation they have abroad, and in America. 
They laugh, but still I think it rankles a little. 



126 An Uncensored Diary 

The cigar factories are three in number, the prod- 
ucts also going to the German army. 

The Germans continue their benevolences in the 
shape of an industrial exliibition. A Frau von Huen, 
who had come from Germany to help run the thing, 
said to us, with amazing frankness: 

"Yes; you know the Belgians were underbidding 
us in the markets of the world because they produce 
so cheaply. Their wages are low, and they spend far 
less than we in protective measures for the employees. 
Also their social insurance expenses are far below ours, 
as they only have accident insurance. We hope, by 
showing the Belgians the safety devices we use on 
machines, our model villages for employees in big 
factories, by explaining our system of insurance, 
with our many sanatoria and hospitals, that the 
Belgians will also demand them, and so raise the 
price of production in their country." 

The German Red Cross does not do very extensive 
work in Belgium for the Belgians. It does help 
some in giving employment to women, sock knitting, 
and the making of some other simple things for the 
German army, and also the encouragement of the 
lace industry. One notices that, with the exception 
of the lace making, the other products of Belgian 



An Uncensored Diary 127 

labour, paid by Germany, go to the German army. 
There are, however, no Belgians making munitions, 
or cannon, or firearms, for their conquerors. 

Most of the industry in the country is paralyzed 
and there are thousands out of work. 

July 24th. 
To describe thoroughly the relief work which the 
Belgians are doing for themselves, through the 
National Committee and through the American Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium (the C. R. B.) would take 
a month; one would have to write a book on the sub- 
ject and repeat what has been told many times of the 
splendid and thorough work of ravitaillement done 
through our American organization. The C.R.B. 
takes care of the food question in such a way that 
literally everyone in Belgium may eat, if not all he 
wants, at least enough to keep him from starving. 
That is their great work. The importation of food 
and its fate hang continually in the balance. England, 
in spite of all proofs and pledges to the contrary, 
is ever in an uneasy state of suspicion for fear some 
of the food may go to Germany or the German army. 
General von Bissing has pledged himself to see that 
the army of occupation is fed from his own country, 



128 An Uncensored Diary 

and also that no food imported by the C. R. B. goes 
over the border. This order is carried out in the 
incomparable manner of all German orders. Still 
the English continue to watch the operations of the 
C. R. B. and send in complaints with a regularity 
that bores the Committee not a little. 

With the Germans, they also have their troubles. 
The C. R. B. wished cattle for northern France, 
which is devoid of all animal food. The cattle 
were bought and paid for in Holland. As they were 
about to come over the border, the German Govern- 
ment forbade it, saying: "Any extra cattle Holland 
has to sell come to us.'* 

Most of the food the C. R. B. imports is sold, the 
profit going to more relief work. Their cry for 
funds is continual. I was amazed at the small 
proportion of money which has been given by 
Americans. The Belgians themselves give the most, 
the English give a considerable amount, and from 
France each month a mysterious check comes for 
4,000,000 francs. There are only forty-five Ameri- 
cans working in Belgium for the C. R. B., and 25,000 
Belgians on the National Committee. 

Mr. Hoover, the head of the C. R. B., is considered 
by Belgium, and by the Committee, the greatest 



An Uncensored Diary 129 

American alive to-day, and they fully expect him to 
go home and move to the White House when the 
war is over. The Germans also think him a man 
worthy of the highest praise, and cannot believe that 
he did not hold some distinguished post in his own 
country before coming to the aid of another country 
which, but for his genius for orgianization, his tact, 
and his perseverance, would have starved and been 
without clothes. 

The C. R. B. is in close cooperation with the Bel- 
gian National Committee. Everything the C. R. B. 
doesn't do, which is quite considerable, the National 
Committee attends to — ^pensions for all those out of 
work; soup kitchens, where a great bowl of nourishing 
soup is sold for almost nothing; the care of women 
for three months before a baby is born, and nine 
months after; and food stations for debilitated 
children from the ages of a week to seventeen years. 
The children are examined once a week by a doctor 
and the proper food prescribed for them. The food 
they get free. In Brussels, 22,000 children eat daily 
in the "Petites Abeilles," as they are called. As a 
result of the care given babies, infant mortality has 
fallen to 9.4 per 1,000 — lower than it has ever been. 
(As Billy remarked, a Belgian baby has a better 



130 An Uncensored Diary 

chance of living than a child born in Philadelphia.) 
But the birth rate is everywhere lower than the death 
rate. 

There is an increase in the number of tubercular 
children, and children with rickets, in spite of the 
work of the ComitS de Secours. Fat is the scarcest 
article of food and tells immediately upon the health 
of the children. Helping to clothe the people is an- 
other branch of the ComitS de Secours. 

July 25th. 

Went to Antwerp. We were met by an officer and 
a military motor, both of which were at our disposal 
for the day. The machine had tires and was not one 
of the consumptive kind to which civilians are con- 
demned in Germany, neither did it have one of those 
insulting whistles that made the car, in which we 
drove around Brussels, a nightmare to those who 
ventured in its speed-limitless path. 

Antwerp is practically intact. One bomb, dropped 
from a Zeppelin, blew up fifty houses. It was in- 
tended for the Government building, and struck only 
across a rather narrow street. The Zeppelin aim is 
rather better than one would wish for comfort. Per- 
haps a hundred more houses were destroyed at this 



An Uncensored Diary 131 

visit. The fighting went on around the forts, some 
miles from the city. The great weakness of all Bel- 
gian fortifications lay in their nearness to the cities 
they protected. Forts to-day must be ten miles from 
the town, and the Belgian forts were six miles or 
closer — some right on the cities themselves. 

In Antwerp, one splinter of a shell came through 
the cathedral window and struck the centre of the 
frame where Rubens' "Descent from the Cross" had 
hung. By good fortune, the Belgians had taken the 
picture away at the beginning of the siege. 

As for the city itself, it is marvellously quiet. The 
erstwhile busiest docks in Europe lie as still as the castle 
of Sleeping Beauty. The store-sheds are empty, except 
for a few which contain lumber owned by neutrals; 
the huge granaries are locked and deserted; the ships 
lie at anchor and grow crops of barnacles on their bot- 
toms. On one pier are 800 dead motor cars, smashed 
by the people of Antwerp before the city surrendered. 
Grass has grown up in the dockyards and between the 
cobblestones on the roads about the wharves. Even 
the German guards stood stiff as corpses, in rigid 
salute, as we passed. The canal boats of the Ameri- 
can Relief happened that day to be lying as stagnant 
as the rest. In toto, the effect was not enlivening. 



132 An Uncensored Diary 

This paralysis of commerce in Antwerp means great 
financial loss to Germany, as well as to Belgium. 
Most of the great fortunes of Antwerp are indeed 
German. It is ridiculous for the Belgians to speak of 
refusing to let Germany ship through Antwerp after 
the war, as the city lives on German shipping. 

July 31st. 

Lou vain we saw from a joggly dog-cart, in com- 
pany with the ever-present Coates and General 
Lowenfeld, ex-Military Governor of Berlin and aide- 
de-camp to the Kaiser. Coates, owing to our frenzied 
expeditions about Belgium, had added fifteen years to 
his sixty-two in the last few days. The unfortunate 
man had orders to accompany us everywhere, and the 
pursuit of his duty nearly killed him. I felt exactly 
as if I were back in Paris at school, and Billy chafed at 
the surveillance, but we were both amused. 

Louvain is decidedly pounded up, but it is not hor- 
rible. Two years have made a difference in the dis- 
orderly work of the German cannon and incendiary 
department of their army. Only one fifth of the 
city was destroyed, but that fifth, happened to con- 
tain most of the University, and the residential sec- 
tion where lived Louvain's best. The City Hall, of 



An Uncensored Diary 133 

extreme Gothic ornateness, stands untouched amid 
the ruins of the Library and surrounding buildings. 
The Cathedral lacks tower, the famous chimes, and 
much of the masonry, as well as interior decoration; 
rubbish lies in heaps on the stone floor, which is itself 
upheaved in spots. The old sexton, who showed us 
around, shook his white head mournfully. 

Young Doctor Rieth told us he knew the oflScer 
well who directed the destruction of Louvain. 

"He told me," said Rieth, "that he had no idea 
there was a library in the town; that if he had known, 
he would not have dreamed of burning it — he would 
have saved it as he saved the City Hall by blowing up 
the surrounding houses. The citizens did not speak 
to my friend about the Library until the building was 
too far gone to save." 

I can imagine that the citizens of Louvain were, 
through horror and terror, in no condition to remind 
the German oflficer that he was destroying one of 
Europe's choicest possessions. 

The German point of view on the destruction of 
Belgian property is: "If they had not resisted our 
men, we should have harmed nothing." 

I repeatedly said that I thought it the most natural 
thing in the world for civilians to shoot at them out of 



134 An Uncensored Diary 

every window in the town, and asked them if they 
would not, as loyal Germans, have done quite the 
same if another nation had held a dress-parade in 
feldgrau, with loaded cannon and machine guns in 
their country. 

All the deliberate damage, or frightfulness, in Bel- 
gium was done in three days, and the dates were 
August 24, 25, and 26. The German explanation is 
this: They could not have the repetition of civilian 
warfare which they met in France in 1870. That had 
been much too inconvenient to the German army. 
They decided, if resistance was made by the civil 
population in the shape of franc-tireurs, that the 
punishment would be swift and sure. It was. Von 
Bissing told Billy that the destruction of Louvain 
was really a very good thing for Brussels, as it taught 
the residents what would happen there if they started 
to annoy the German army ! Not a stone in the city 
was touched, but one woman, of whom the world knows 
well, was. We have not mentioned Miss Cavell. 

During our drive about Louvain we passed the 
building which held the stores of the C. R. B. The 
Stars and Stripes flew from the top window. I saw 
the flag and lifted Billy's hat from his head, as he was 
occupied watching something in another direction. 



An Uncensored Diary 135 

"There is our flag," I said pointedly to the General, 
with Billy's hat in my hand. Whereupon, the 
Kaiser's aide-de-camp, and Excellenz Coates, and the 
officer who was showing us about, saluted like gentle- 
men. 

We bumped out over the cobblestones to one of the 
Aremberg castles. The deal* Duchess seems to pos- 
sess an unhmited number. The place was almost as 
romantic as Warwick, but all furniture was gone. There 
were endless little staircases and rooms. Billy rushed 
about looking for a secret door or passage. Every- 
thing was named; I was particularly taken with the 
Corridor des Chats. 

Namur and Liege, which I had pictured as razed to 
the ground, are intact, except for a few houses. At 
Namur, the forts have been rebuilt, and the bridges, 
which the Belgians themselves blew up, are recon- 
structed. 

At Namur the big hotel on the hill above the old 
French fort is now nothing but a shell. The Belgians 
directed their fire from it, and in five minutes the 
German guns knocked it down like a child's house of 
blocks. One can see from this height the battle- 
field on the opposite hill, where the Germans charged. 
We motored over there and found, in the middle of 



136 An Uncensored Diary 

ripe grain fields, a ruined chateau, the remains of a 
church, and the few farmhouses about. There are 
graves under the trees with small wooden crosses 
above them, and flowers planted. The trees in the 
wood about the chateau which had been splintered by 
cannon fire, had been cut down and taken away. 
Two springs since the fighting took place had healed 
the other trees. The holes in the ground were filled 
up and covered with grain. It was hard to believe so 
many men had fought and died here about the church 
and chateau, and in the treeless meadows. 

While this fight was going on, the bulk of the Ger- 
man troops were marching into Namur, peacefully 
and unopposed, by the road along the Meuse, high 
gray cliffs shooting up from their right hand, and the 
river running on their left. Only a few kilometres 
over the hills, the unwitting Belgians struggled to 
protect their city. They shot down a beautiful old 
chateau of the Arembergs, in order better to direct 
their fire, and fought all through the woods back from 
her place up to the open field of which I spoke. 
Barbed- wire entanglements still remain as witness 
of the fighting in the forest. 

We managed to see much of the country about 
Namur that day, as the soldier who drove our gray 



An Uncensored Diary 137 

government motor had learnt fearlessness in the 
trenches, as well as a certain recklessness and disre- 
gard of life that kept my heart in my mouth. We 
were followed by three more motors, filled with 
fat Swedish and Danish Socialists. If our car 
slowed up, we could see the others beating up the 
white dust on the limestone road behind us. Our 
chauffeur would as soon have been captured by the 
Russians as let them come up with us. Excellenz 
shook his head to think that the German Govern- 
ment now allowed socialists, and foreigners at that, 
to go touring through the country. 

At Liege we again went bounding about in an 
automobile. Fort Loncin was the most interesting 
thing to see there, as the city is scarcely touched. 
The Germans attacked the fort from the middle of 
the city, firing Austrian 30.5-cm. guns from a cen- 
tral square. This news was rather a blow to us who 
had been told of the platforms of concrete for the 
guns, secretly built by the Germans before the war 
miles outside of the city. Fort Loncin was not pre- 
pared for an attack from the rear in this way. Their 
cannon could do everything but shoot backward. 
In the middle of the night, on August 14th, after 
seven days' siege, the fort blew up, and when this 



138 An Uncensored Diary 

volcanic explosion had quieted down to the last roll- 
ing pebble, there was silence. One of the shells 
had penetrated the 12-foot concrete covering of the 
fort and burrowed into the powder magazine. All 
those in and about the fort who had not been blown 
into flying drops of blood by the explosion, were stun- 
ned and senseless. General Leman was picked up un- 
conscious three hours later by the Germans. The 
queer part is that the thing is scarcely more terrible 
than an Egyptian ruin is terrible with its gigantic fal- 
len monoliths. A great cannon lies turned upon its 
back where it was thrown from the middle of the fort. 
It does not look uncomfortable. The wide gap made by 
the explosion is beginning to be covered with grass. 
One knows that four hundred Belgian soldiers still lie 
buried beneath the concrete boulders, but somehow the 
grass and the wild red poppies conceal from the imagi- 
nation the horrors the inventions of man brought in 
those seven days of siege. Down one hole is a moulder- 
ing skeleton, scarcely visible in the dark and rust. 

In the country, one motors for miles and sees noth- 
ing out of the common. Then, suddenly, there is a 
village with the inside of every house scooped out. 
The village two miles away is intact, then come scat- 
tered ruins and odd graves by the roadside. 



An Uncensored Diary 139 

As for Brussels itself, it seemed to us, who had been 
in Berhn for six weeks, a gay and cheerful place. That 
we saw no Belgians certainly did not detract from the 
impression, though I think they are, in spite of all, a 
gayer people than the Germans. In the park on 
Sunday, boys and girls were playing football and 
other games and shrieking with delight as they 
capered about. The children romped unsubdued on 
the grass, while dogs rushed up and down, barking 
with an abandon no German dog would have under- 
stood. Billy, Count Harrach, and I were out to- 
gether for an afternoon in the woods. We stopped 
and laughed, thinking, as we watched the Bel- 
gians play, of how we in America had pictured them, 
starving and dejected. 

But this spirit of fun does not conceal the bitterness 
the Belgians feel toward the war and the Germans. 
The knowledge that they are a conquered people 
makes them bitter, but never kills their hope. Their 
confidence that the English will soon be back to rescue 
them never dies. The waiters, the store people, the 
barber who washed my hair, all said: "In three 
months!" (They have said "three months" since 
the war began.) They think the English are gods 
and tell you stories of their bravery. A Belgian 



140 An Uncensored Diary 

friend of Philip Piatt said that one day he watched 
from his window a single Englishman hidden behind 
bushes. The man had a pile of ammunition and a 
machine gun. He shot and shot and shot, and the 
Germans could not find him. When all his am- 
munition was gone, he sat on a stump and lit his 
briar pipe, smoked a while, and then crawled back 
and jumped into the river. 

Another Belgian watched a handful of Englishmen 
behind a barricade of sand bags keep at bay a far 
superior number of Germans for twelve hours. When 
all their shells were fired, instead of surrendering, 
they started a cricket game and, in this way, played 
until all were down. 

Upon Billy's appealing to Count Harrach, we were 
allowed to go to tea with the Whitlocks. Diplomatic 
life in Belgium to-day is one of the experiences it is 
no harm to omit. If the American Diplomats at- 
tempt to be tactful with Belgians about the Germans, 
and say that they really are a nice lot after all, Bel- 
gian doors close and hats are not lifted in the street. 
Yet if they refused to see Germans or avoided them 
they would shortly be requested to leave on the 
grounds of being anti-German. Tact and diplomacy 
have a hard life in Belgium now. 



An Uncensored Diary 141 

Mrs. Kellogg was refused admittance to the 
Petites Abeilles, as they said she had been there the 
day before with Germans. As it happened, I was 
the culprit, so things were smoothed over. 

We also were allowed to lunch with the Kelloggs, 
unattended. They are delightful people, heart and 
soul in the C. R. B. Mr. Kellogg was much agitated 
over the effect the 1,000,000 marks fine would have 
upon American contributions. 

"Every time the Belgians disobey rules and get 
fined," he said, "Americans stop sending money." 

Philip Piatt, who was also at lunch, had, as his 
chief worry that day, the knowledge that the three 
young Princesses de Ligne, who are ardently working 
for their country, were feeding the children in the 
Petites Abeilles so fast that they nearly choked them. 
The question which bothered him sorely was, who to 
get to tell the three noble ladies that their attentions 
would be more appreciated if they were less violent. 

Berlin, August 2d. 

Our last night in Brussels we dined with General 
von Bissing. The dinner, for some peculiar reason, 
was given for us. 

At 7:30, the gray motor, painted in three places 



142 An Uncensored Diary 

with the German coat-of-arms a foot square, called 
for us. 

Half an hour's run and we came to the park of the 
chateau of Trois Fontaines; a well-laid-out drive 
through big trees soon brought us to the square 
white chateau, with its broad stone steps leading up 
from either side of the terrace to the door. The 
hall was filled with officers. One very glorious look- 
ing person took me in charge and introduced each 
man to me. They clicked their booted heels together 
and kissed my hand. This audience over, the 
Governor appeared. He is seventy-two and looks 
sixty. His face is stern yet not unkind. On finding 
I spoke no German, he changed to careful, cor- 
rect French, beginning with the not too original 
question : 

"How do you like Belgium?" 

I said I thought it was getting along very much 
better than I had had any idea of. He laughed and 
offered me his arm to go into dinner. Billy followed 
with Countess Mengerson. 

Through the hall and front drawing room we 
marched into the white-panelled dining room, the 
parade of oflficers following. The servants behind 
our chairs were soldiers in feldgrau. I felt as if 



An Uncensored Diary 143 

one of them should stand in a corner and blow on a 
bugle the order to commence eating. 

I had had instructions from every officer in Brus- 
sels to talk to the General about his sack factory and 
the industrial exhibit, and the Hospital of Saint- 
Giles, so I dived in without waiting to taste my soup. 
As a matter of fact, it was no effort to tell the Gover- 
nor that they had all interested me hugely, for it 
was quite true. I highly approve of his giving the 
people work and no one could but admire the 
hospital. 

"I have a great deal of sympathy for these people, 
who after all were not responsible for starting the 
war," said he. 

"Are you going to let the cattle go to northern 
France.'^" I asked. 

"No," said he. 

"Are you the man from whom the order comes?" 

"Yes, but I refused this afternoon to let the cattle 
go out of Belgium." 

"Why?" I asked. 

"They don't need them in France; they have 
enough to eat." 

"But they have no animal food at all," I said. 
"No eggs, nor milk, nor meat." Mr. Kellogg had 



144 An Uncensored Diary 

said so and he knows what northern France has to 
eat as well as he knows the alphabet. 

"No, I cannot," said the General. 

I said no more as I was afraid I might get the 
C. R. B. into trouble through meddling in their 
affairs. I suppose Von Bissing was afraid to let 
even the 300 cows asked for go out, as a precedent 
once started might be hard to stop. The French 
are Uving on starvation rations now, or the minimum 
amount possible. Most of the grain crop in northern 
France will go to the Germans, as they have fer- 
tilized the ground, planted and gathered the crop 
themselves. They allow 100 gr. a day to each French 
person. 

I said I was greatly interested to hear that he, 
Von Bissing, had made plans for feeding the Belgians 
from their own soil if the C. R. B. had to leave and if 
no other neutral country could carry on the work. 
England probably wouldn't trust the Dutch, and the 
Spaniards wouldn't have the business ability. 

"Yes," said Von Bissing, "I am convinced it 
could be done. The people might not have enough 
to eat but they would not starve." 

Perhaps this might be possible if the harvest were 
good, but the weather is a tricky friend. 



An Uncensored Diary 145 

Count Harrach sat on my other side. Much to 
my disgust, I had had to give my diary up to be 
censored in the afternoon. I asked Harrach if he 
had seen it. 

"Yes," said he, severely. "And you have said 
a number of things about us which are not very 
pleasant." My heart sank — what had I said.^* 

"I never meant to say anything nasty," I said 
humbly, "you have all been tremendously nice to 
us and we really do appreciate it. I said wonderful 
things about you, anyway, did you read that part.^^" 

"No," he said crossly. 

"I said you were one of the nicest men I'd ever 
met." 

"That makes no difference. You wrote of Belgian 
atrocities by our soldiers. You said that the German 
officers stood on the piano of a Belgian minister with 
their shoes." 

"I would have said the same of my brothers if they 
had done it," I insisted, still worried. 

"Your brothers are not German officers. This is 
not what we gave you permission to come into 
Belgium for." 

I said I would scratch out that part about the 
piano. 



146 An Uncensored Diary 

We argued for ages and I complained to Von Biss- 
ing and asked if I wasn't right, until finally I gathered 
that I was being unmercifully teased. 

"In any case," Harrach finished, scathingly, "I 
will not forgive you because you are a suffragette!" 

I asked Von Bissing if he approved of suffrage, and 
he said: "Never! It is something terrible for 
women." 

"Madame thinks the German women do nothing 
but hunt their husbands' slippers and wait on them," 
Harrach explained, and he insisted that the only 
reason American women were for suffrage was be- 
cause they never had more than two children so had 
too much time on their hands. I said my mother 
had six children, but I did not add that she took not 
the slightest interest in the vote. 

After dinner we moved to one of the drawing 
rooms. The windows looked out on a stretch of 
lawn flanked on either side by high trees. At the 
end of the lawn was a pond, and beyond that were 
meadows and woods. On the right and left sides of 
the house were gardens and terraces. 

Billy talked with Von Bissing the rest of the 
evening and I sat on a long lounge with Harrach, Von 
Lanken, Count Mengerson and Doctor Rieth. 



An Uncensored Diary 147 

"Thank heaven there are no princesses here," said 
I, "I can sit on the sofa. I don't see what right prin- 
cesses have to a monopoly on comfortable furniture." 

Von Bissing had the most wonderful cigarettes. 
Harrach said they came from the Kaiser. I wish I 
were a friend of the Kaiser. The German substitute 
for tobacco is vile. 

At ten the motors were announced and we all said 
good-night. With clicking heels the officers bowed 
us out, the handsome aide-de-camp-en-chef po- 
litely seeing us into the car; we rolled out of the park 
past the lodge and the big iron gates, while the 
Governor's guard, in cream-coloured uniform, stood 
at salute. 

"Did you have a good time.^*" asked Billy. 

"Yes," said I, and with true regard for the impor- 
tant things in life, I added: "But I had on the most 
dreadful dress I own." 

Harrach came back to the hotel with us and we 
talked till quite late. 

The Lusitania was mentioned — dangerous topic! 

"It was with joy we heard of its sinking," said 
Harrach, most humane of men. 

"It was with horror we heard of it," said Billy. 

"It was armed," said Harrach. 



148 An Uncensored Diary 

"It was not," said Billy. 

"Help!" thought I. 

Then they both looked at each other, burst out 
laughing, and agreed to change the subject. 

The point of view of the Germans in Belgium is dif- 
ferent from that of the Germans at home. In Ger- 
many, the opinion of statesmen and business men 
seems strongly against annexation or retaining any 
hold on Belgium. The contrast of the civil, as 
against the military opinion, shows when one talks 
to those now in charge in Belgium. The govern- 
ment in Belgium is, of course, strictly military, from 
stern old General Von Bissing down. Most of these 
men fought through the country they are now ruling 
and they feel differently about letting it slip away. 
The mildest say: "Well, in any case, it will not be as 
before the war." Others want a free Belgium, "but 
with some sort of supervision, you know. If she is 
given absolute freedom, she would only become 
England's pawn again." More want an indemnity, 
instead of paying one themselves, as they talk of in 
Berlin. The point is, they do not want to lose their 
hold on the country. Some would charge Belgium 
a heavier toll than she is paying now. The 
$8,000,000 a month covers only half the cost of 



An Uncensored Diary 149 

governing and maintaining an army in Belgium. 
The man in charge of Tournai said that 10,000,000 
marks of German money came into Belgium over and 
above the 40,000,000 marks which were paid to Ger- 
many each month, 

"No other country in the world would allow that," 
said he, 

"We have destroyed about $400,000,000 worth of 
Belgian property," they say; but they do not 
count the losses to Belgium through the two years* 
paralysis of her industries, and the closing of her 
port. 

What Billy said in his article, in regard to the 
German attitude toward the occupation and invasion 
of Belgium, as contrasted with outside opinion, I 
quote : 

"The Germans consider their invasion of Belgium 
an ordinary act of war, and ask that their administra- 
tion of Belgium should be considered as an adminis- 
tration of a conquered country — like the administra- 
tion of Serbia. The Belgians and their friends 
consider the invasion of Belgium a crime; they 
consider the mere fact that there is a German 
administration in Belgium a continuing crime, and 
they do not care about considering whether the 



150 An Uncensored Diary 

administration is more or less decent, or more or less 
rotten. ..." 

"From the point of view of the administration of a 
conquered country, the Germans are giving Belgium 
a decent, efficient, stern government." 

I asked an officer if there was any supervision of the 
schools by Germans. 

"Unfortunately not," he answered. "We should 
have it, as the Belgian schoolmasters do anything 
but teach affection for the Germans. If we keep 
Belgium, we shall of course supervise the schools." 

In July, on the national fete day of the Belgians, 
Cardinal Mercier said Mass in the Brussels Cathedral. 
Saint Gudule was crowded and still. Permission 
had been given for the singing of the Brabangonne. 
The Cardinal, who knew his people and the orders 
of the German Government, had sent word there was 
to be no demonstration. At the end of Mass, the 
great congregation took up their National Anthem. 
They sang it through and, at the end, the old Cardi- 
nal walked out among his priests and choir boys. 
His hands were folded like the pictures of a praying 
saint, his eyes looked straight before him, and tears 
streamed down his face. The people, perfectly well 
behaved till now, broke into cries of: " Vive le Red I 



An Uncensored Diary 151 

Vive le Cardinal Mercier /" The old man is adored 
by his people. To show their affection, they dis- 
obeyed his orders, for which I doubt if he thanked 
them. 

That evening, as his carriage drove through the 
streets to the station, the holiday crowd again took 
up the cry of " Vive le Roi ! Vive Monseigneur le 
Cardinal !" A fine of a milhon marks was imposed 
for this celebration. The people knew they would 
be fined if they did this kind of thing, but evidently 
they thought it was worth the price. 

At the end of a street, on which all but German 
soldiers are forbidden to go, is a statue symbolizing 
Belgium, free and independent. All day long the 
men of Brussels walked past the street, looked up 
toward the statue, and lifted their hats. The 
women bowed. Each passerby wore a piece of green 
ribbon, and the green meant "Hope." . . . 

A year ago, on the national fete day, the Belgians 
closed their shops. This they were forbidden to do 
again under the penalty of a heavy fine. The shops 
were kept open but no wares were in the windows; 
the proprietor sat in his back room with his feet upon 
the mantel-piece and his back to the door, smoking a 
pipe. 



152 An Uncensored Diary 

Berlin^ August Jfth. 

Every one congratulated us on our trip to Bel- 
gium; they say it is quite unique, particularly my 
having been allowed to go. 

I went to the Embassy to-day to lunch. Billy 
lunched with Von Pritwitz. Every time Billy has a 
new idea about the war he gets a German and inflicts 
it on him. This idea is that Germany's idea of peace 
is on the plan of a thermometer. The height of the 
mercury denotes Germany's military success — the 
higher the mercury, the more Germany will say she 
absolutely must have. Freezing point is territorial 
integrity. As the mercury sinks below that, she pays 
indemnities to Belgium and France; lower still, gives 
back Alsace-Lorraine; then Schleswig-Holstein, her 
portion of Poland, and so on down through the re- 
duction of her army and navy and the paring off of 
her territory. 

Hindenburg has been given charge of the eastern 
front, proving that Austria must have been feeling 
rather dejected. He was in command almost two 
weeks before the news came out. It must be a great 
blow to Austrian pride. 

I wonder if he will drive the Russians back a 



An Uncensored Diary 153 

second time. When Hindenburg won the battle of 
Tannenberg and drove the Russians out of East 
Prussia, he was executing in reality what he had 
lectured the military students about for twenty 
years. In his lecture course he had called it the 
"Battle of the Masurian Lakes," and none in the 
world knew so well what to do in just the situation 
which arose as did this retired general. He had been 
refused, at the beginning of the war, as too old, and 
was obliged to sit at home helpless, and read about 
the Russians swarming into his country. At this 
point, the Kaiser remembered Hindenburg. In the 
middle of the night orders arrived that the General 
in command of the eastern front had been deposed 
and Hindenburg put in his place. A special train was 
waiting and Hindenburg started at two in the morn- 
ing and worked out his plans as he sped toward 
the advancing Russian army. In three days the 
enemy was in retreat and Germany was saved. Is 
it a wonder the people call him: Unser Hinden- 
burg? The story goes that the General who was 
in command sent word to the Kaiser that he must 
retreat behind the Oder. The Kaiser sent word back : 
"Retire behind the Oder, but without the army," 
and immediately sent for old Hindenburg. The 



154 An Uncensored Diary 

General never plays politics. A few years ago, when 
there was a general inspection of troops, they con- 
ducted a sham battle. General Von Moltke managed 
to get a very strong position; then the Kaiser, as a 
grand finale, led an immense cavalry charge down a 
plain and exposed his troops to fire from three sides. 
As a grand stand play, it was magnificent. Trium- 
phant, the Kaiser rode up to General Hindenburg, 
the referee. 

*'How was that. General.'^" he demanded, proudly. 

The General saluted. 

"All dead but one. Sir," he said. 

August 5th. 

We saw Mr. Hoover and Doctor Kellogg at the Es- 
planade. Hoover corrected Billy's article on Belgium 
and was very complimentary. He told us his only 
orders from the English Government were: "Honesty 
in execution, efficiency in distribution." Considering 
the C. R. B. does the largest grain business in the 
world, and that only on sufferance of the British 
Government, this sounds rather liberal. 

Hoover and Kellogg are here negotiating for 50,000 
Dutch cows for northern France. England, in order 
to keep cattle out of Germany, buys half of all Dutch 



An Uncensored Diary 155 

exports. This is more than England wants, so she has 
agreed to let the C. R. B. have a share of the half. 
The consent of the German Government now has to 
be obtained. There is no reason why the Germans 
should not let the cattle go to northern France, as 
they could not get them for themselves, anyway. 
As Holland has almost as many cows as she has 
people, it will not break her heart to sell a 
few. 

Mr. Hoover says the lower classes in Germany are 
getting 1,700 calories a day. The artisans in Bel- 
gium, who are out of work, are getting about the 
same — a very low rate, as 2,500 to 3,000 is normal. 

August 5th. 

The Berliner Tageblatt has been suppressed for 
several days as the result of printing quite the most 
sensible article on peace that has as yet been pub- 
lished. The author suggested, among other things, 
that annexation was rot and that some idea of 
permanent peace should come out of the war. I 
wonder what jail he is in! Isn't it wonderful how 
free the "press" is in Germany? 

The rain has stopped and the harvest will be good, 
after all. 



156 An Uncensored Diary 

August 9th. 

Stopped in to see Countess Gotzen. She had just 
come up from lunch. 

"Well," she began, "the waiter brought me a piece 
of beef to-day which I couldn't recognize the cut of 
for some time, and I've been a housekeeper for 
thirty years. I looked at it and I said to myself: 
*Now this isn't the leg and it isn't the rib, and it 
isn't the shoulder.' Then I said: 'I know what 
it is, it's the tail! And what's more, it isn't a cow's 
tail — it's a horse's tail,' so I called the waiter. 
'Now, waiter,' said I, 'I am not complaining, this is 
purely a matter of interest, but I want you to take 
this piece of meat to the chef and ask him if it is not a 
horse's tail.' 

"In a few moments the man came back, red to 
the roots of his hair, and said: * Madam, it is a 
horse's tail!'" 



Ill 

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY 

Berlin, August 11th. 
Billy has gone to the eastern front. I am most 
wifely depressed at having him away. 

August 13th. 

Had tea with Constance Minot and Countess 
Bernstorff the other day. Just now she is in a great 
state of nerves over the thought of going to America 
to join the Ambassador. She declared she knew the 
English had been lying in wait for her for two years 
and were going to be as disagreeable as possible. 

"They will search everything I have, I know," said 
she. "They will wash my back with acid and they 
will rip the lining out of everything, and I shall never 
be fit to be seen again." 

In vain Constance and I assured her that she would 
be treated with great respect. I told her we had had 
no trouble at all, and she said: "What did you do.?*" 
I answered that we made love to the English in- 

157 



158 An Uncensored Diary 

spection officer and asked him to dinner, and asked 
her why she shouldn't do the same. 

"I suppose that would be the best way," she an- 
swered. Another real grievance was that everyone 
had tried to give her things to bring to friends and 
relatives in America. 

" One woman gave me a large box. I opened it and 
found a toy Zeppelin. Imagine if the English had 
found that in my trunk ! They would have taken me 
off the boat and hanged me, surely!" she said, with 
a laugh. 

August 15th. 

Went to Herringsdorf on the one o'clock train Sat- 
urday with Lithgow Osborne and Christi an He rter. 
The Ambassador was in Herringsdorf with Aileen and 
Lanier Winslow, Kind Mrs. Kirk had taken me all 
over Berlin in the morning to try and find me a bath- 
ing suit, but it was impossible to buy one without 
four different kinds of permission, and there was no 
time for that. I'm sure I don't see how any one ever 
gets clothes any more. It would take three days to 
buy a petticoat. Finally, I was reduced to borrow- 
ing a bathing suit, a tight one-piece affair, and 
Kirk's green bathrobe. We were met at the station 
by the others and escorted in state to the Kurhaus. 



An Uncensored Diary 159 

After dinner we went for a walk on the pier, I 
was with the Ambassador, who kept making his 
dry, humorous remarks about everyone. Soon a 
guard turned us back. 

" What's the matter? " I asked. 

"You are in Germany," rephed Mr. Gerard. 
"Don't forget that. They wait until they find out 
that people like to do a thing, and then at once 
they forbid it." 

"What I'd like best, Mr. Gerard," said I, "would 
be to hear you talk to the powers that be in Ger- 
many. It must be rather difficult for them to 
understand all your jokes." 

"It is," he replied. "They can't make me out 
at all here." 

He makes the most glorious remarks to every 
one. I heard that, apropos of the Lusitania, the 
Ambassador said to the Chancellor: 

"Your argument about the Lusitania amounts 
to just this. If I were to write a note to your sister 
and say: 'If you go out on the Wilhelm Platz, I 
will shoot you ! ' and if she did go out on the Wilhelm 
Platz and I shot her — that would be her fault, 
wouldn't it?" 

And one day when Zimmermann remarked: 



160 An Uncensored Diary 

"The United States couldn't go to war with us, 
because we have 500,000 trained Germans in the 
United States," the Ambassador repHed: "You 
may have 500,000 trained Germans in the United 
States, but don't forget that we have 500,001 lamp- 
posts." 

I left for Berlin the next day at 4 :30. The others 
said I was a great idiot not to wait until Monday and 
go home with them, but I had a feeling Billy might 
get back earlier, so I left. 

The next morning Billy got back. The trip to 
the front had been a great success. He went up in 
an aeroplane over the Russian lines and got shot at and 
had all sorts of a good time. He said the Austrian 
troops, except the Hungarian Hussars, were the sad- 
dest sight in the world — all old men and young boys, 
while the Germans were strong-looking, healthy men. 
The Germans call the Austrians Bruderherz, and while 
they are fond of them, and say they are very brave, 
they add : "They are now quite useless as an army." 
They said that several times the Russians have com- 
pletely broken through the Austrian lines, but they 
were never clever enough to follow up the advantage. 
The Germans have a dreadful time to keep their 
allies from a continual retreat. Billy says the 



An Uncensored Diary 161 

Austrian and Hungarian oflScers are most lovable, 
and have no notion of what eflSciency means. They 
build a dug-out that one could knock down with a 
base-ball bat, and plant flowers around any place in 
which they spend a night. They always have a 
great deal of music, good wine, and excellent food, 
and take war far more casually than do the Germans. 
The Germans told Billy that the Austrian troops had 
an annoying habit of picking up in the night and 
walking to the rear five or ten miles, without saying 
a word to any one. I should think it would be a 
trifle disquieting to wake up in the morning and find 
oneself holding a point with no one near. 

The Russians almost never attack the German 
troops; they always make sure it's an Austrian divi- 
sion before advancing. An officer gave Billy a 
photograph, taken after a Russian attack on German 
trenches. One could not see the ground for the 
bodies of crumpled Russians. The most ghastly 
thing is that they must leave them where they fall on 
the ground or tangled in the barbed wire. When the 
Germans attempt to rescue them, they are shot at, 
so the men lie there screaming till they die. Then 
the horrible stench sickens the men in the nearest 
trenches. I suppose the Germans also shoot if 



162 An TJncensored Diary 

rescue is attempted, or the Russians would rescue 
their own men. A German spoke to Billy and said 
he didn't want any lunch; he'd just gotten several 
men out of their barbed wire — the poor wretches 
were in a sad state. They had hung there wounded 
for several days, and their gaping flesh crawled. 

A German aviator told Billy that the Allies, since 
the July offensive, have command of the air on the 
western front. He said the English and American 
aviators were the most daring and fearless, and never 
hesitated to attack. All the reporters in Billy's party 
were taken up in aeroplanes. Billy's aviator was nice, 
but the others were irritated at having to take up pas- 
sengers and did all sorts of dives and rapid circles, 
so the poor newspaper men were almost terrified into 
hysteria. Ackerman of the "United Press," after a 
swoop or two, spent the rest of his flight in the 
bottom of his machine with his head in his hands. 
He was quite green when he reached ground, so I 
don't imagine the observations he took would ever 
damage any one much. 

The Russian prisoners said there were no French 
or Japanese officers at the front. If there were any, 
they advised from the background. 

The only things left of Brest Litovsk are three 



An Uncensored Diary 163 

churches and a new rock-garden, flowers and "ver- 
boten" sign complete, built amid the ruins by the 
Germans. Warsaw is much the same as ever. 
Whoever spread the rumour that all children under 
seven years of age were dead in Poland, prob- 
ably went through Warsaw in the night. The Jews 
to whom Billy spoke said they hated Germans, Poles, 
and Russians equally, but at least no one shied bricks 
at them under German rule. 

War corresponding to-day must be a pleasant life. 
You go de luxe as the guests of the government; you 
are dined and wined by Generals, while a Hungarian 
orchestra outside the dug-out supplies a "potato 
cantata," or a "fugue to go with the beans." 
Dress parades and cavalry manoeuvres are given 
for your benefit, and you have automobiles and 
wagons at your disposal. The only drawback is 
that, if you happen to say anything either uncommon 
or interesting in your story to the newspapers, it is 
cut out by the censor. 

August 18th. 
Billy and I saw Doctor Moll this morning about 
children and the birth rate. He is getting statistics 
for us on infant mortality and on the birth rate. 



164 An Uncensored Diary 

Infant mortality is lower than it has ever been, just 
as every one told me. The health of older children, 
owing to the care given them through private so- 
cieties, is in some places better than formerly, and in 
no place worse. There is no increase in either rickets 
or tuberculosis. There was, in the beginning of the 
war, an increase in tuberculosis but this was im- 
mediately taken in hand. The birth rate in Berlin 
is down to about 11 per 1,000. 

The care given mothers of small infants I have 
spoken of before, so won't repeat. Dr. Gertrude 
Baumer, and others, told me that unmarried mothers 
and illegitimate children get the same allowance from 
the State as others, if it is proved that the father 
is a soldier. Doctor Moll said that there were so many 
private institutions for the care of mothers of il- 
legitimate children, and for the children, that the 
State assistance was usually unnecessary. The ille- 
gitimacy rate is somewhat higher than before the war. 

As to what would be done to increase the birth rate 
after the war, the Doctor was uncertain. He con- 
firmed what Doctor Baumer told me, and added that all 
families will be insured whether working in factories 
or not. They will thus all have free medical care 
when ill, and free attendance at childbirth for mothers. 



An Uncensored Diary 165 

This will be substituted for the free medical care now 
given to wives and children of soldiers. 

The childless will probably not be allowed to 
will more than half their money — the other half will 
go to the State for the care of children. Doctor Moll 
went on to say that the laws of illegitimacy will not 
be radically changed. It will not be legalized. 
Inheritance laws will almost certainly be the same for 
illegitimate as for legitimate children. They believe 
the children must not be allowed to suffer; they must 
in every way have the same protection as others. 
To legalize illegitimacy would increase it greatly, 
and Moll says they still believe marriage the best 
status under which to rear young. 

Moll said, as does everyone else, that they will 
try to bring the German women again to the occupa- 
tion of hausfrau, and added that, to forbid her work- 
ing for her living without offering her a home and 
husband as a substitute, would be unjust. 



August 19th. 

Deliver me from efficiency, and save me from the 
hand of mine enemy, the police! Peacefully and 
unobtrusively did we wish to travel to-morrow to 



166 An Uncensored Diary 

Vienna, and we discover that the simplest way in 
which it is to be done is to visit ten poHce bureaus and 
a consulate, in none of which does one do anything 
but wait for hours, and then get asked one's age! 
If they don't ask how old you are, they tell you you 
are in the wrong bureau. The right bureau is two 
miles away and there are no taxi-cabs. When you 
get to the right place, they tell you it closes in five 
minutes and that seventy-five people are ahead of 
you, so you must come the next day, only the next 
day is Sunday, so you have to wait till Monday as 
the police stations are closed. 

Here is what we did this morning: 

1. Police station, our district, where we have 
gemeldet eight times already. Told to go to 
Central Police Station. 

2. Ten minutes' walk. 

3. Twenty minutes in subway. 

4. Four flights of stairs as high as the Statue of 
Liberty. 

5. Room 363 — that's wrong. 

6. Go to 375 — Policeman asks, in a growl, when 
we were born and then gives us two sheets of 
foolscap written in German script. We can't 
read it and he tells us to fill it out and get it 



An Uncensored Diary 167 

stamped by the police in the nearest station to 
our house. 

7. Ride back in subway — no cabs anywhere. 

8. Crowded poHce station. Wait. 

9. Laborious filling out of blanks. Age asked 
twice. 

Back in subway to Alexander Platz. 
Four flights up. 
Long wait at end of line. 

Age asked and a check mark put at the end of 
filled out blanks. Order to go to room 365. 
Room 365 sends you downstairs. 
Man downstairs in room full of dossiers on 
people with name beginning with B; looks up 
dossier on Bullitt and asks age. Sends us up 
two flights. 

Wait in large room, like a lecture-hall, full of 
people. Two policemen on platforms, writing, 
pay no attention to any one who looks in a 
hurry. 

Old man, with stiff joints, dares to say he will 
die if he doesn't get to Vienna to-morrow. 
Police tell him to sit down and come again 
Monday. 
Enter Swede, who says he has to go to Vienna 



168 An Uncensored Diary 

to-morrow. Policeman asks his age. Swede 
says : ' ' What- the-Hell-d'you- wanta-kno w-that- 
for.^ I've told it nine times already to-day." 
Policeman says he may be a spy. Swede says 
he isn't, and that it's the damnedest system he 
ever saw anywhere. Rest of the room begins 
to look pleased. Policeman tells Swede to come 
again Monday. 

19. We begin to wonder how long the people we 
have asked to lunch will wait for us. 

20. All the policemen leave the room with every- 
one's papers and don't come back. 

21. I say I'll never be polite to another one of them 
and that I don't care if I never get to Vienna. 

22. Billy says he doesn't see why I don't think it's 
funny. I object to having my sense of humour 
questioned, and say I'm hungry. 

23. We decide to leave. Go without papers or 
anything. 

24. Policeman we meet says it*s too late for passes 
that day, anyway. 

Chris Herter, Lithgow Osborne, and Herr Horst- 
mann were waiting at the Bristol for us. We 
poured out our woes and attempted to exagger- 



An Uncensored Diary 169 

ate, but couldn't. Herr Horstmann, being most 
sympathetic, said, if we'd write down an account, 
he'd send in a complaint from the Foreign Office. 
I have decided it is useless to try and be patient 
with a German policeman. It doesn't do any good, 
and swearing might relieve the feelings. He is too 
used to having the subdued public be polite to him; 
he doesn't notice it. If you make a noise and tell 
him he is a worthless idiot, he may think you are a 
superior officer and do something for you. 

Billy saw Helfferich the Vice-Chancellor in the 
afternoon. Helfferich is not impressive to look at, 
but he is the cleverest man in the government, and 
one of the five men who run Germany. He said 
Germany could go on indefinitely as far as food was 
concerned, and that the harvest was from twenty- 
five to thirty per cent, better than last year. The 
country will be far better off this coming year for 
food, than last year. The bread rations will probably 
be increased and the cows, owing to better food, will 
produce more milk. 

As to peace terms, he said that one of the first 
would be the abandonment of the economic war 
against Germany. He said he did not like to say 
much about indemnities, as it made their opponents 



170 An Uncensored Diary 

foam at the mouth to hear the word, but that, if 
Germany was in a military position to demand them, 
at the time peace was to be concluded, they should 
certainly take them. He went on to say that there 
were only two ways of getting the Germans out of 
the territory they now held — one was to drive them 
out; the other to buy them out. He said this war was 
too complicated for the Germans to be able to say 
what they wanted. He also said that they would insist 
upon England's agreeing to the unhindered passage 
of merchantmen in the time of war. It was, he said, 
not only necessary for Germany, but for all neutral 
nations as well, to insist upon such an agree- 
ment. 

He said it was impossible now to say whether 
England and Germany could come together after 
the war. Lasting peace for Germany means to him 
primarily strong frontiers and a strong army and 
navy, and good alliances not an international con- 
ciliatory body with a sanction behind it. 

We went to the Grews' in the evening. Quite a 
large party. We had expected to dance, but Count 
Zach, the Chancellor's son-in-law came, and Count 
Sehr-Thoss, so we couldn't. Both these gentlemen 
were depressed because they had just had news of the 



An Uncensored Diary 171 

death of a dear friend on the eastern front. I have 
spoken but Httle of the sorrow with which one is sur- 
rounded. Brave as these remarkable people are, the 
atmosphere is continually depressing. 

Billy and I talked with Mr. Gerard principally. 
He said, among other things, that it was a great pity 
the United States didn't know more about Germany, 
and that the profound state of ignorance everyone 
was in at home was very dangerous — that it was im- 
possible for newspaper men to get frank statements 
of facts back to America, since they were blocked by 
two censors, and that one of the best things to have 
was more newspaper men coming in for a few months 
at a time. 

"I hope they will send you back again next spring,'* 
he said. He asked Billy if he'd seen Helfferich, and 
on B's saying "Yes," Mr. Gerard said he thought 
Helfferich had done almost more than any one else to 
maintain peace with the U. S. in forcing the abandon- 
ment of the U-boat war. 

"Helfferich knows that if the United States comes 
into the war, the other neutral countries probably 
will also come in, and Helfferich refuses to answer 
for the state of German finances in such a case," 
Mr. Gerard added. 



172 An Uncensored Diary 

Vienna, August 23d. 

Vienna, yes, but it certainly wasn't through any 
fault of the Berlin police that we got here. Our ex- 
periences on Saturday were nothing to what we went 
through when we "came again Monday." The 
Swede and the old man weren't there, but the room 
was full. We heard the policeman, writing at the 
table on the platform, saying: "Bitte Platz nehmen ein 
augenblick'^ to the guileless and unsuspecting public 
as we entered. How little did they know that, at this 
point, they should wait three days before any one 
took further notice of them. After twenty minutes, 
Billy walked to the platform to remind the police- 
man we were still there. He told us to wait a little 
longer, that the policeman who had our papers hadn't 
come in yet and the door of his room was locked. We 
had come at nine o'clock. At ten we asked again. 
"Yes, the man was here." At ten-thirty, another re- 
minder. "Der Herr ist zu ein Konferenz gegangen/' 
said the relentless one on the platform as he labori- 
ously wrote the date on a card, preparatory to asking 
his next victim's age. 

"What's the matter with the man?" said Billy, 
angrily. " Must we go and get another letter from the 



An U licensor ed Diary 173 

Foreign Office in order that someone shall pay atten- 
tion to us?' 

"He's not a Mensch!" stormed the policeman. 
"He is ein Herr ! He is a high official. Don't call 
him a Mensch.^' 

We retired, crushed, for another half hour. Some- 
one came in and whispered that our papers were lost. 
The policeman, unmoved, turned to Billy and said he 
had orders not to give us our passes for three or four 
days, 

"Who gave you that order?" asked Billy, calmly. 

No answer. 

"I should like to know your name, please," said 
Billy. 

Again no answer. 

We made for the nearest telephone in some heat. 
Doctor Rodiger, in the Foreign Office, who is cer- 
tainly the most obliging man in Germany, fixed the 
matter up for us so that, in two hours and a half more, 
we had moved up to the last room. Here, three men 
and two stenographers wrote out three identical his- 
tories of each of us and pasted countless numbers of 
our photographs wherever there was room. This 
took three quarters of an hour. An American ste- 
nographer could have done all of it in ten minutes. 



174 An Uncensored Diary 

My ideas of German efficiency had received a mor- 
tal blow! 

The Austrian Consulate received us long after 
closing hour and vised our passes. Smilingly, they 
told us that everyone always came hours late. The 
air seemed twenty times lighter there and no one 
seemed to be taking life seriously. 

We meldet off at our own police station and re- 
called with horror that we should have to do the 
whole thing over again when we leave for home. 

The luggage examination when we entered Austria 
was of a superficiality that charmed our American 
souls. They scrambled through the trunks without 
making a mess; they ran their hands about the lin- 
ings of our coats and hurriedly looked in the bottoms 
of our shoes, and still we conceived a great affection 
for them. When I heard a man say, as he rushed 
by a guard, that he hadn't time to show his ticket, 
I realized that Austria was nearer home than Prus- 
sia. 

The Hotel Bristol, where we are staying in Vienna, 
is peopled with everything from the Wm. C. Bullitts 
to the Archduke Franz Salvator. In luxury, it is the 
last word. In our room you can telephone, turn on 
the lights, open the door, and ring for three different 



An Uncensored Diary 175 

varieties of servants from any spot in which you hap- 
pen to be at the moment. 

We called at the Embassy the morning we arrived 
and presented our letters of introduction from the 
Berlin Embassy. The Penfields were away, but Mr. 
Grant-Smith and Mr. Dolbeare were most cordial. 
Mr. Grant-Smith began by telling Billy that the 
Austrians were the most delightful people imaginable, 
and that no one ever was able to find out anything 
about them or the situation. He said the Embassy 
didn't know anything and nobody else did either. 
That sounded rather discouraging but we didn't de- 
spair. After that, everyone we met told us the same 
thing: "Delightful, charming, sympathetic people, 
but slow as caterpillars; it is impossible to hurry 
them." 

We lunched with Grant-Smith and Dolbeare that 
day. Mr. Otto Bannard was also there. He is In- 
spector-General of the American Red Cross, and he 
was in a great state because it had taken him three 
weeks to get permission to go to Belgrade, and because 
the permission allowed him to stay just ten hours! 
They were all anxious to know what things were like 
in Berlin. We said you could get enough to eat if you 
paid for it ; that the place was heavy and rather gloomy , 



176 An Uncensored Diary 

and that everything was so regulated you couldn't call 
your soul your own; that they were anxious for peace 
— quite sure they could never be beaten, and that they 
were showing splendid bravery and energy. 

We drove that afternoon. When we got into the 
cab, the driver said it was forbidden to take a cab for 
sight-seeing but that he would take us to a cafe by a 
long circuit and there we could drink a glass of wine 
and come home by another circuit. His, not being 
a Prussian conscience, was quite satisfied by this 
evasion of the law. We made our detour rejoicing, 
our fondness for the Viennese increasing at every 
block. Vienna seemed so gay after Berlin, the 
women are pretty and well dressed, the soldiers salute 
and still retain a human expression, the pedestrians 
look as if they took a real interest in life, and we be- 
gan to feel at home. It is a common saying, that 
the Austrians are pessimistic but gay, and the Ger- 
mans optimistic but glum. 

In the evening we dined with Green and Foster, of 
the Rockefeller Relief, and Doctor Ryan, one of the 
chiefs of the American Red Cross in Serbia. Ryan 
has had so many adventures that he wouldn't notice 
anything less than getting killed now. I asked him 
if he'd seen much typhus in Serbia. 



An Uncensored Diary 177 

"Yes," he said; "I had a hospital with two thou- 
sand patients in it, most of them typhus cases." 

"Did your staff get the fever?" I queried next. 

"Well, I was the only doctor," said he, "but six out 
of my twelve nurses got it." 

"Were you inoculated .f^" I still continued, blithely. 

"No," he answered. "I didn't need to be — I had 
typhus." 

"Tell her about your trunk," said Foster. 

"I was coming to Buda-Pesth," said Ryan oblig- 
ingly, " and as I was operating all day, one of my nurses 
packed my things. I had a souvenir trunk. When I 
got to Pesth, the men dropped it on the platform and it 
blew up. The nurse must have packed a grenade in 
with the other things. It wounded three men and I 
was in an awful mess." 

"Did they arrest you?" asked I. 

"Sure," said Ryan. "Fined me 30,000 kronen, too, 
but they let me off, later. The men sued me for 
damages, too." 

Buda-Pesth, August 28th. 
Owing to my being seized with a fit of economy, we 
travelled down here second class. It was crowded 
and smoky and hot, and Billy was considerably 



178 An Uncensored Diary 

annoyed at being thus inconvenienced, but only said 
he thought he'd stand up in the corridor all the way, 
which of course made me feel like a horrid brute. 

On arriving, we came to the Ritz, whose name is 
now changed to the "Duna-palota." Here we took 
rooms looking up the Danube and toward the great 
hills rising from the river. On one side of the river 
there are no mountains, and those on the other side 
stop abruptly a mile down the river. Opposite us is 
the palace, with its terraced slope some hundred feet 
above the Danube. The building is large and beautiful 
but it stands empty the year around, for neither King 
nor Archdukes will leave Austria to visit the other 
half of the kingdom, a slight the proud Hungarian 
deeply resents. 

One does not have to be here very long to discover 
a decided bitterness toward Austria. They say that 
the Hungarian troops are always put in the front 
trenches and that the Hungarian losses are pro- 
portionately far greater than the Austrian losses. 
We find that here, as in Austria, there is no love for 
the Germans. They respect and admire them and 
trust them, but affection for them they have none. 
Of their fondness for France, they speak continually. 
They do not fight against her and they worry con- 



An Uncensored Diary 179 

tinually over whether the French will hate them after 
the war and not allow them to visit France. 

We called on Mr. Coffin, the American Consul- 
General, that afternoon. He received us most 
cordially although we had no letter of introduction. 
As far as I could make out, he had the afiPairs of all the 
Allies to take care of. 

We sent our letter from the Gerards to the Sigrays, 
and that night, after dinner, they met us in the foyer 
and introduced themselves. They were so very nice 
and it gave one a pleasant feeling to think there was 
someone in the town one knew. 

The next day we lunched with them. Count 
Sigray was speaking about the interned English and 
French. He said one of the many inspectors came 
down to Vienna one day and asked to see the interned 
enemies. 

"Sorry, sir," was the answer; "would you be so 
good as to come another day; to-day is a race day and 
they have all gone to the races, sir." That is the way 
the poor forlorn interned enemies are treated in 
Austria. In Hungary, the few English and French 
do not seem to be suffering much from confine- 
ment. Billy and I met two of them on Sunday morn- 
ing on top of the highest mountain near Buda-Pesth. 



180 An Uncensored Diary 

An English voice and accent telling someone "to 
come along now, do hurry up"; and then a man in 
Harris tweeds stalked out of the woods. We decided 
that if we were going to be interned we'd choose 
Austria or Hungary. 

Count Sigray applied many corrosive adjectives to 
the Italians. 

"You know," he said, as if relating the final out- 
rage, "we even have to have a special hospital for our 
men who have been bitten by Italians ! They scratch 
and bite so in close combat, that it's something 
dreadful." Billy and I laughed and looked skeptical. 

"That's true," Sigray protested. "They don't 
know how to use their fists. Our men don't, either, 
only they don't bite. I know a man who was riding 
around a hay-stack and an enemy soldier stuck his 
head up out of the hay. The Hungarian was so 
startled he couldn't think of anything to do but slap 
the man's face." 

Later, Countess Sigray took me to the Gyula 
Apponyi's. Countess Apponyi is an American girl 
about my age. Her husband is the nephew of 
Count Albert Apponyi, who, with a few other men, 
runs Hungary. 

I think the Hungarians are the most hospitable 



An Uncensored Diary 181 

people on earth except our Southerners. Count 
Apponyi immediately asked me what I wanted to 
see and said he'd show us everything. Then they 
said we must dine with them at the Park Club 
that night and go on a spree afterward. Billy met 
Mr. Drasehe-Lazar, Tiza's secretary, that same after- 
noon and promised him to dine that night at the Park 
Club, so we all went together. It is a luxurious place, 
equipped with every possible comfort and furnished 
extravagantly with objets d'art, good and bad. 
Apponyi showed us all about and assured us the 
place was built for flirtations. Here all the balls are 
given in peace time. 

"They used to be in private houses," said our host. 
"But everyone tried to give a more gorgeous ball 
than the last until no one could afford to give them at 
home any more." 

We dined outside on the terrace near a fountain. 
The war seemed far away, and Berlin farther yet. 
Later, we went to a cafe chantant and to another little 
place on the same order, where they danced. I 
thought of how one had to shut the windows in Ger- 
many for fear of being seen dancing, and I was over- 
joyed to know I was sitting in a box in a Hungarian 
cafe, with four new friends who were merry and full 



182 An Uncensored Diary 

of laughter and carelessness. How much nearer 
the American temperament is to the Hungarian than 
to the Prussian ! 

The Hungarians have suffered enormously in this 
war; their losses have been cruel, but the lightness of 
their spirit is still there. It's a quality which makes 
one love them — this power of being able to laugh in 
the midst of sorrow. 

August 28ih. 

Count Apponyi came this morning to take us to see 
hospitals. As I greeted him, he said : 

"Well, it seems war is declared." 

"No!" I cried, as my own country flashed into my 
mind. 

"Yes, since nine o'clock last night, Rumania has 
been at war with us. When Italy declared war on 
Germany yesterday, I was sure it was coming. Even 
so, it is a shock when it happens." 

Then Billy came down and was much excited to 
hear the news. When the Central Powers sent a 
warning to Rumania, Billy declared there would be 
war in two weeks. It's rather queer that there was 
war in just two weeks. 

"There are our two allies, Italy and Rumania, now 



An Uncensored Diary 183 

fighting against us," said Apponyi. "One more or 
less, what does it matter! We are now completely 
surrounded. And the filthy way the swine declared 
war! They sent in their declaration on Sunday 
evening, when they knew the Foreign OflBce was 
closed. It's a wonder any one was there to open it. 
And at the moment the declaration was due to be de- 
livered, the Rumanians started firing on our troops! 
It must have been impossible for hours to get word 
along our line that a new war had begun. Our men 
had strict orders not to fire under any conditions. It 
is simply too disgusting," 

Billy and I hastily agreed that it was disgusting. 
One likes the Hungarians so much that a calamity to 
them seems a calamity to all. 

"To think," Apponyi went on, "that only the day 
before yesterday, the King of Rumania told our Min- 
ister that he was sure neutral relations would be pre- 
served! The declaration of war was written instead 
of telegraphed — it was in Vienna when the Rumanian 
King said that to our Minister." 

Every Hungarian we met that day spoke only of 
the Rumanians as swine and dogs. 

This makes the thirtieth declaration of war. Will 
the madness never stop? 



184 An Uncensored Diary 

The Hungarians say they will not let Transylvania 
go until every Hungarian is killed. I cannot see how 
the Allies will reconcile themselves to giving all 
Transylvania and Bukowina to Rumania if they 
are victorious, and yet we hear they have promised it 
to her. This business of bribing a nation to fall on 
another's back takes away what honour there ever 
was in war. 

We went this morning to an invalid hospital, 
where soldiers who had lost an arm or a leg were 
learning to use their mechanical limbs. They formed 
in a long line and went through an obstacle race, 
only no one did any racing. It makes one's heart 
ache to see them. They smiled and even laughed 
as they tried to get around an obstacle with their 
steel legs. Then they formed in a ring and kicked a 
football, an excellent thing they say to teach them 
balance. 

We went all through the place where they make 
the legs and arms. For each man they make a 
working leg and a Sunday leg. The working leg has 
a small wooden foot on the end about six inches long, 
jointless and rounded at both ends, like a rocker. 
The Sunday leg is very elaborate. It has a jointed 
foot, fitted into a shoe, the leg is rounded out with 



An Uncensored Diary 185 

leather and the man walks with scarcely a limp. For 
the false arms, there are hundreds of different de- 
vices, which the man can screw into place himself 
quite simply. These devices enable him to do nearly 
everything a real hand and arm can do. The outfits 
are given the men by the State. The Hungarian 
doctors have been so inventive in this that German 
doctors continually come down here to copy the 
newest instruments. As the Hungarians say, when a 
German praises, they may indeed believe they have 
done something. In the hospital for blind soldiers 
they are also teaching the men trades. They make 
carpets and brushes and baskets of all sorts. They 
learn how to typewrite, and to operate a telephone 
exchange. I was surprised to learn how few blind 
there were, only 240 Hungarians. 

August 29th. 

At ten-thirty this morning, the telephone rang. 
I went. 

"This is Graf Apponyi," I heard. 

"Oh, hello," said I, gaily. "How are you to-day?" 

He said he had come to see Mr. Bullitt. 

"What made you get up so early? " I asked, think- 
ing it was one of the young Apponyis whom we knew. 



186 An Uncensored Diary 

Billy went to the telephone and came back, saying 
it was Count Albert Apponyi, and that he said he 
would come back in an hour. 

"I'm going to get up at six- thirty every day now 
for fear the Prime Minister will also call before I'm 
dressed," declared Billy. 

The telephone rang again. 

*' Good-morning," said a man's voice in a Hungar- 
ian accent. 

"Good-morning," I answered amiably. 

"Is that you, madame.^" the voice went on. 

"Well," I said, "I don't know whether it is or not." 

"What.?" asked the voice. 

"I said I didn't know whether it was I or not. 
Who do you think it is.? That makes some dif- 
ference." 

"Mrs. Bullitt," answered the Hungarian accent. 
"ThisisMr. Lazar." 

"Oh," I replied with no sign of recognition in my 
tones. 

"I do not think you remember me," the gentleman 
said politely. "You dined with me at the Park 
Club the first night you came!" 

"Oh, Mr. Drasche-Lazar ! " I cried, at last growing 
a trifle more intelligent. Hungarian names are so 



An Uncensored Diary 187 

difficult, I always have to think about them before I 
recognize them. The upshot of the conversation 
was that Count Tisza would see Billy in a few days. 

We went downstairs and found Mr. and Mrs. 
Cardeza. They are Americans from Philadelphia. 
Mr. Cardeza is Mr. Penfield's secretary, and Mrs. 
Cardeza is in the Red Cross. She has nursed at the 
Hungarian front ever since the war began and has 
done wonderful work. She has been decorated 
several times. Everyone says she is as tireless as she 
is fearless. Poland, she told me, was in a woeful 
state. 

Count Albert Apponyi came in later. He is one of 
the finest people I ever met — tall, with gray hair and 
a gray beard and moustache, a lean figure, and a 
high-bred bony face; he looks rather like a very 
aristocratic Uncle Sam, and his manners are like 
Colonel Newcome's. 

" I am not wanting in hospitality," said he. " I got 
home only last night or I should have come before." 

After all, one does not expect one of the busiest 
men in Hungary to call on two young people of whom 
he never heard before, but the Hungarians are really 
the most polite people I ever saw. 

Billy had an interesting talk with him. He takes 



188 An Uncensored Diary 

the entrance of Rumania into the war very seriously, 
but says it will spur the Hungarians to harder fight- 
ing. He thinks the " ungentlemanly " way in which 
Rumania attacked has stirred the people to real fury. 
Of Germany, he said: "One of the best things we 
have in this war is the realization that our great ally 
will stand by us with all his forces and be faithful 
to the death. And we two, Austria and Hungary, 
do not consider for one moment making a separate 
peace which would save our own skins but sacrifice 
our ally. Hungarians are not Italians or Rumanians. 
We do not break our word." 

This is a thing one feels strongly in Hungary. 
They have a high sense of honour, and there are 
certain things which they agree it is better to die 
than do. The German point of view on such mat- 
ters is rather different. For instance, this is part 
of a conversation Billy had with one of the most 
important officials in the German Government: 

"Would you, in order to make a separate peace 
with Russia, promise her Constantinople.''" asked 
Billy. 

"We might," he answered. 

"Would it not be rather hard to throw over the 
Turks?" Billy went on. 



An Uncensored Diary 189 

"No," said the German. "We would only have 
to publish full accounts of the Armenian massacres, 
and German public opinion would become so in- 
censed against the Turks that we could drop them as 
allies." 

Apponyi thinks Andrassy should replace Burian 
as joint foreign minister. Not to have an Ambas- 
sador in the United States, he declares to be abso- 
lutely wrong. 

"President Wilson wants one and has offered to 
send a warship for him," said he. 

Count Andrdssy told Billy that Apponyi himself 
should be sent. Certainly America would be the 
gainer if this should be, and Austria-Hungary would 
be better represented than, to my knowledge, it has 
ever been. 

Count Apponyi has fought all his life to have 
universal suffrage in Hungary, and he now says he 
believes Count Tisza, who has always been against 
it, will have to grant it to the men who have fought 
for Hungary. Apponyi says the Austrian Parlia- 
ment should be allowed to sit — it hasn't been called 
since the war, and the responsibility for the Hun- 
garian Parliament, as the only mouthpiece of the 
government, is too great. He also said they did not 



190 An Uncensored Diary 

want to annex Serbia, or to crush her independence, 
and that the Hungarians admired Serbia's spirit 
immensely. Of course, I'd like to know how greatly 
the independence of Serbia was being considered 
when Austria sent the note. The note was written 
by Count Tisza. 

Hungary declares that Russia is her great enemy, 
and Count Apponyi doesn't understand why England 
should apparently contemplate allowing Russia to 
become larger still, since she has always considered 
Russia her ultimate enemy. He does not see any 
definite way in which a lasting peace may be made 
from the war, although he wishes greatly it might 
be. They speak of a "free Poland." It's rather 
hard to know what that means, but it probably means 
a free Russian Poland, with Austria-Hungary as over- 
lord, or a free Russian Poland as a third part of the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy — that is, triality in- 
stead of dualism for the Empire. 

August 30th. 
Billy found our bathroom locked this morning, 
when his desires were centred on a shave. Splash- 
ings were heard within. Billy rang irately for the 
maid. 



An Uncensored Diary 191 

"Who is in my bath tub?" demanded he. 

"The Prince," said the chambermaid. 

"What Prince?" asked Bill. 

"The Prince of Thurn und Taxis," answered she. 

"Will you please throw him out of the bath tub?" 
asked Bill. 

"I can't," said the maid. 

Billy made a dive for his clothes. 

"Where are you going?" I asked. 

"I won't have a prince in my bath tub," said he; 
"I'm paying for it!" 

"He got up earlier than you did," said I. "Be 
reasonable." 

"Don't ask me to be reasonable," he answered, 
jamming his hat on his head and disappearing around 
the corridor. "It would spoil the effect of the scene 
I'm going to make." 

In a few moments the management was to be heard 
mounting the stairs with hurried feet, and the Prince 
was ousted. 

A party of us lunched on native dishes at a Hun- 
garian restaurant. As a result, nearly everyone was 
ill but myself. The youngest Apponyi brother was 
there, back from the front, to attend the House of 
Lords. Mrs, Cardeza said he'd been on patrol work 



192 An Uncensored Diary 

all through the war, as he was such a wonderful marks- 
man, having hunted all his life — now his game was 
Russians and Serbians. He uses a telescopic sight on 
his rifle and is said to be a dead shot. 

September 2d. 

Turkey and Bulgaria have declared war on Ru- 
mania. Of course it was the only decent thing for 
them to do. The refugees fron Transylvania are al- 
ready pouring into Hungary, and the Rumanians are 
advancing fast. On Friday night, at dinner. Count 
Teleki, of the General Staff, told Billy that there 
were only eight thousand troops protecting the Ru- 
manian border when Rumania declared war. Many 
here think that they will be able to drive this new 
enemy out in a few weeks; the chances of this seem 
slim now. 

More hospitals with Apponyi this morning. I feel 
as if every man in Hungary lacked an arm or a leg, or 
had a bad body-wound somewhere. We went to the 
big nerve hospital, where 1,200 men were being cured 
of nerve wounds. The place is crowded. Three 
operations were going on in the same room at once. 
Men were sitting in rows in the corridors, waiting to 
be dressed; the massage rooms were full; the exercise- 



An Uncensored Diary 193 

rooms, with their queer machines for exercising fin- 
gers, arms, or wrists, backs, legs, or shoulders which 
have become stiff through wounds, were occupied by 
men doing their often painful daily tasks. In other 
rooms, X-ray treatment was being given, electric baths 
taken, wounds which would not heal exposed to the 
ultra-violet ray; past open doors anaesthetized men 
were wheeled silently. I never saw a hospital which 
appeared to be working at such speed. 

We saw another hospital where nerve shock is 
treated. Men come in un wounded but shaking so 
they cannot stand. They are given a severe electric 
shock and are able to take up their beds and 
walk. These men can never go back to the front. 
At the sound of the first shell, they fall to pieces 
again. In still another hospital men with bad 
muscle wounds were taken. In connection with this 
are hot mineral baths, which the doctor told us had 
great restorative powers for stiff and helpless muscles. 

After seeing all these wounded men, Billy and I 
would indeed have been depressed, if we had not gone 
also to the workshops in connection with the hospit- 
als, where these men were learning trades. As long 
as a man has one arm, I believe there is little he can- 
not learn to do. Watch-makers, carpenters, sign- 



194 An Uncensored Diary 

painters, tailors, architects, builders, shoe-makers, 
blacksmiths, who had never done the like before, were 
industriously working away. The State takes it 
upon itself to see that the men get jobs. The teach- 
ing is, of course, quite free. Seventy per cent, of the 
men who make the orthopaedic shoes, the legs, and 
arms, and body-supports for the wounded men, are 
themselves invalids. 

September 3d. 

We went to a sitting of the House of Lords. About 
all I can intelligently say is that Hungarian is a 
musical language to listen to. 

I was interested to see Count Tisza, the strongest 
man in Austria-Hungary to-day. It is common 
knowledge that Berchtold was only a tool of Tisza's, 
and that Burian, the present Foreign Minister, is 
another. The Minister President is of another type 
entirely from Count Apponyi — a closely built figure 
with a brusque manner of speech and little considera- 
tion or patience for the slow or stupid, he is a perfect 
example of the "strong man." 

Tisza spoke on the entrance of Rumania into the 
war. He could make little excuse for the scarcity of 
troops on the Rumanian border, I imagine it was be- 



An Uncensored Diary 195 

cause they did not have the men, but of course Tisza 
could not say that in Parliament. A leading member 
of the opposition answered him, one of the many 
Count Szechenyi's. After that, no one listened to 
the speeches. 

Hungarians seem to me at once the most demo- 
cratic and the most snobbish of people. They shake 
hands with the cook and are on friendly terms with 
the coachman, yet the twenty-five or thirty families 
who rule Hungary object to any addition to the 
aristocracy, and resent an intrusion of the people 
upon their feudal rights. The Hungarian noblemen 
hate the Jews bitterly and say they are ruining every 
gentleman in Hungary. 

They are delightfully high-handed. One man told 
me that he had been so late a few days before that he 
had had to keep the train waiting two hours for him. 
Another said he had been out hunting and, fishing to 
get home in a hurry, had built a fire in the middle of 
the railroad track, and stopped the express. 

The internal affairs of Hungary are too involved to 
grasp in a short while. Only those who have spent a 
lifetime in the study of this conglomerate nation fully 
understand the diflficulties of governing the many 
different peoples within their borders. 



196 An Uncensored Diary 

Billy has seen Count Tisza. The interview was 
startHng but cannot be put down. 

Vienna, September 5th. 

We lunched at our Embassy to-day. Mr. Penfield 
is a most original character. Mrs. Penfield is always 
doing nice things for people, and they are both ex- 
ceedingly hospitable. 

We leave for Berlin the day after to-morrow. It will 
be queer to be under severe regulation again. If any 
one asks for a bread card here, one acts as if one were 
insulted and the waiter apologizes profusely and 
rushes to bring the bread. We asked them how they 
could afford to serve so much food, and they said: 
*'0h, we can't economize like the Germans. We will 
eat until there is no more food, and then we will stop, 
but we can't make ourselves miserable with thinking 
about it all the time." 

Berlin, September 15th. 
I have been reading Wells's book, "What Is 
Coming." Much of it is based on the idea that 
there will be a revolution in Germany, and that the 
Hohenzollerns will be forced to abdicate by an en- 
raged populace and a republic established. Now, if 



An Uncensored Diary 197 

there is one thing there will not be in Germany, it is a 
revolution. It is the last country in which such a 
thing is likely to-day. The German people have 
seen many a war fought on their soil, without think- 
ing a dynasty must be heaved out as a result of it. 
They have sacrificed their comfort, their riches, and 
their sons before this. In the Thirty Years* War, 
they saw their fifteen-year-old sons go out to fight, 
and they stayed in their homes doing what they could 
besides, to help their country. I think the outside 
world still believes the Germans will awake some 
day, and in wrath declare they have been made dupes 
by their Emperor and led into a war which he might 
have stopped had he wished. 

In the first place, the outside world could not pos- 
sibly convince the German people of anything their 
government denied, or did not wish them to believe. 
The German people know no better than the people 
of any other country exactly why this war is being 
fought but they think they know and they believe, 
with all the strength of unalterable conviction, that 
they were attacked by the whole European world. 
It would be quite as impossible to convince the Bel- 
gians that they were responsible for the war as it 
would be to convince the Germans, and to convince a 



198 An Uncensored Diary 

people that they were needlessly sacrificing them- 
selves for a fictitious ideal would be the only way 
to rouse them to start a movement against their 
leaders. 

In the second place, the German people will not try 
to overthrow the Hohenzollerns, for more than one 
reason. The Emperor is popular. The people like a 
king, and would have no use whatever for a presi- 
dent. They like the glamour of a court and a royal 
family, and would take no satisfaction in anything 
less imposing. But more important than the popu- 
larity of the Hohenzollerns is the fact that the Em- 
peror is not the autocrat the world imagines him, and 
Germany knows it. Constitutionally great as is his 
power as head of the army and navy, and as King of 
Prussia, he is not omnipotent. The Emperor's per- 
sonality is powerful, but so are the personalities of the 
other chiefs of the Empire — Von Bethmann-HoUweg, 
Hindenburg, Helfferich, Zimmermann, and Von 
Jagow. The Emperor cannot do just as he pleases 
with all of them any more than his grandfather could 
do just as he pleased with Bismarck. Added to this 
— which most of the world would not believe — the Em- 
peror is considered by his people not in the least 
warlike; they think of him as a man to whom war is 



An Uncensored Diary 199 

disagreeable and far from desirable. But whatever his 
people and those who know him personally think him 
to be, the outside world (which does not know him) 
still imagines that, single-handed and alone, with 
aggressive nationalism on the brain, he led his unsus- 
pecting people into a disgusting, dripping war. That 
sounds wild and writes up brilliantly in the news- 
papers, but it's stale, and unrefreshing as news, when 
one sees the Emperor actually has nothing like the 
power his enemies believe he has. 

Another thing which Wells does not take into 
account is the amazing solidarity of the German 
people about the essential thing, of not allowing the 
Allies to win the war while they have an ounce of 
strength left to prevent it. There are different 
parties in Germany, certainly. There are the more 
or less violent ones who shout for annexation; there 
are the Tirpitzers, who blow about U-boats, and say: 
"Who cares if we get into a fight with America, any- 
way.'^" there are the saner ones, who want only terri- 
torial integrity, and to these the government seems 
to belong; there are the Socialists, who like Sudekum 
instead of starting a revolution, are loyally support- 
ing the government. Liebknecht is in jail, Bern- 
stein is old and mild and gentle, and it is a simple 



200 An Uncensored Diary 

matter to suppress his articles or forbid him the use of 
a hall in which to speak. Taking it all in all, the Ger- 
man people, not the leaders of the people, show a 
unity, a solidarity, and loyalty and strength of 
patriotism that it would be hard to surpass. Added 
to this, they have the habit, as have no other people, 
of obeying. Orders which would make a Frenchman 
or an Englishman or an American snort with rage, are 
carried out unquestioningly. J suppose this quality 
of obeying is one of the things people mean by "Ger- 
man Militarism." If the whole German army were 
to be abolished, I doubt if it would speedily change 
the nature of the people. If their qualities and in- 
herent characteristics had not been what they are, 
they could not have developed their army into the 
eflScient automaton it is. But then, I suppose, to 
discuss whether the German people as they are to- 
day are a result of an army, or an army the result of 
the people, is like the hen-or-the-egg problem. 
Without an army, they would still be the hardest 
workers, and the most thorough; their industrial life 
would still be as highly organized — their social legis- 
lation as efficient; reverence for the law would con- 
tinue, and obedience to a superior still be the habit. 
It's in the blood for the whole nation to work as an 



An Uncensored Diary 201 

army; to abolish German militarism would be to put 
an end to the German nation, which is certainly not 
desirable. 

Berlin^ Septemher 16th. 

Flags were out a week ago for the first victory over 
the Rumanians. There is another reported to-night 
which seems to mean a far greater victory. That 
the English and French have made gains is only to be 
expected, as Hindenburg's policy, like Napoleon's, 
has all along been to whip the weaker enemy first, and 
hold the stronger with a weakened force. For the 
few miles he loses in the west, he will probably gain 
hundreds in the east — whither the great General 
Headquarters have been moved. 

Many say the Chancellor will be far stronger now 
with Hindenburg as Chief of Staff. Falkenhayn and 
Bethmann-Hollweg worked badly together. They 
say Falkenhayn was self-seeking. None say so of 
Hindenburg. Hindenburg is honest, unassuming, a 
brilUant general, and a loyal supporter of the 
Chancellor. The separation of the military and 
the political authority of the Empire is certainly 
much less great as a result of Hindenburg's appoint- 
ment. 



202 An Uncensored Diary 

September 17th. 
j Have to send my diary to-morrow to the Foreign 
Office to be censored, so I shall not be able to write 
any more. All our papers have to go ahead of us to 
Copenhagen by the courier from the Foreign Office. I 
do nothing but take things down there. We have 
volumes of pamphlets, all Billy's notes, books of 
statistics, etc. — not to mention my magnum opus. 
Yesterday I told Doctor Rodiger that, if he cut a word 
out of it, I should come back and finish him with an 
axe. He promised that it should not be touched. 
Poor man, we do give him so much trouble and he is 
so nice about it. As a final piece of impudence, I 
handed in what was left of the box of hair tonic we 
had recovered from the frontier. They are sending it ! 
I think the German Foreign Office is most obliging. 

Billy has just had a second long talk with Von 
Jagow. Food is getting scarcer. You are supposed 
to get only one egg a week. No more butter is served 
on the table, which makes breakfast rather dreary, 
and milk cannot be bought for children over six years 
old except by a doctor's prescription. The city is 
making plans for Municipal Kitchens on a large scale. 

These last two weeks have produced nothing more 
exciting than a series of luncheons. 



An Uncensored Diary 203 

There were quite a number of people at lunch at the 
Embassy yesterday. Last Sunday there were only Mr. 
Horstmann, the Duke and Duchess of Croy, and our- 
selves. We were late and the Ambassador rebuked 
me severely. I got even with him for it yesterday, 
however. 

Our very good friend Noeggerath came to say 
good-bye to us. We shall miss our twenty-four hour 
discussions with him. 

Copenhagen, September 28th. 
They behaved beautifully 'at the frontier. We 
found all our things here from the Foreign OflBce. 
/ It must have hurt the censor's feelings cruelly to let 
my diary by. He put crosses and exclamation points 
down all the margins. I wish I might have kept 
a really frank diary. Billy's notes were cut to rib- 
bons, and he is in a rage. Fortunately, I have in this 
diary duplicates of a number of things he wants. 
/ Billy has learned from the German Foreign Office 
itself that German officials received the Austro- 
Hungarian note to Serbia fourteen hours before it 
was presented in Belgrade This fact has been 
persistently denied by every German, official or 
unofficial, we have met. The Foreign Office says 



204 An Uncensored Diary 

it did not have time enough to decide what it must 
do to avert the consequences the note obviously 
would produce. 

Must we have wars, then, because statesmen are 
unable to make up their minds between eight in the 
evening and ten the next morning? 

Last night we went to a dinner which the Egans 
gave for Mr. and Mrs. Gerard. We thought it was 
going to be very small, with only one or two people 
besides the de Hagermann-Lindencrones and Mrs. 
Ripka, but the Swedish Minister and his wife were 
there, and Mrs. Morris, the wife of the American 
Minister in Stockholm, and the American attaches 
here, and Count Szechenyi and Prince Witgenstein, 
so it was quite a formal affair. All the rules of pre- 
cedence were followed, Mme. de Hagermann going in 
first with Mr. Egan. 

The complications of social life in neutral countries 
are great. I would not for anything be the servant 
who opens the door. If a French woman comes to tea 
and then one of the ladies belonging to the Central 
Powers comes, the man has to say his mistress is not 
at home. He has to know everyone and just what 
country they come from, for none of the enemy diplo- 
mats speak. A French woman and a German woman 



An Uncensored Diary 205 

did get mixed up yesterday at Mrs. Totten's at tea, 
but they were perfectly polite to each other. There 
are special days at the tennis club for the different 
countries. It's very amusing. 

Now I have come to the end. I am going to 
America and that is the only thing in the world that 
matters to me to-day. 



THE END 




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